


helplessness blues

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Character Study, Cooking, Depression, Dogs, Domesticity, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Loathing, Self-Love, Self-Medication, Therapy, break-up, cognitive distortion, joan didion, non-au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:18:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3509798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis gets dumped and gives up on himself at the end of 2014. Niall steps in to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	helplessness blues

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to: [lucy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/balefully), as always, for enabling, editing and making sure niall got his; [arielle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ceaseandexist) for the studious beta and much moral support; [becka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/becka) and the twit squad for helping me hit those word count gainz; and [clare](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fervent) for furnishing me with tunes, snapchat inspo and the very best vibes. ♥ and this fic would not be the same without its GORGEOUS AMAZING PERFECT ART by the wonderful [dez](http://1dezpo.tumblr.com/), which you will find in the fic! thank you dez, you were such a joy to work with, i love you!!! 
> 
> title is from the song by fleet foxes. i've fucked with recent happenings (esp. certain james bay-related ones) a bit to suit my needs, but this is essentially non-au. pls heed warnings, and a brief TW for a gay slur near the beginning. i should also note that louis isn't exactly clinically depressed in this, as much as going through a tough time and exhibiting depressive behavior. however! this fic was super personal for me, and i wish i could give louis all this advice and niall luv irl, but i can't, so i wrote this instead. hope you like.
> 
> standard disclaimer: reality is a construct, truth has no meaning, the following is hellsa fictional.

> "To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference." -- Joan Didion, [On Self-Respect](http://www.vogue.com/3241115/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961/)  
> 

**(monday)**

Louis doesn't notice Niall in his living room until there's a silhouette in front of the television, saying his name. He gasps like he's been underwater, jerking half-upright on the couch.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he slurs, trying to untwist from the comforter in which he's been vegetating, stoned, for the past several hours. A lighter dislodges from the folds of it and hits the rug. It's the cheap Batman one, Louis observes dully, stolen from Liam who stole it from Zayn.

"Hey," Niall says. He drops into a crouch on the other side of the coffee table, stares up at Louis with his mouth open. "Couldn't tell if you were sleeping."

"How'd you get in here?"

"Your PA gave me her key. Are you okay?"

"Fuck," Louis grunts, scrubbing at his face. "Ever heard of calling ahead?"

Niall makes an incredulous sound. "I did," he says. "And texted. No one's heard from you in, like, days, Louis."

"Well, I'm alive," Louis grumbles, glancing over at Niall's shoulder at the telly. "Why are you in my house?"

"Checking on you." Niall's voice is tiny, barely audible under the aggressive sound of the old Breaking Bad episode playing on Louis' giant flatscreen. "We missed you at a couple of things. Everyone's really worried, man."

Louis registers uncertainty on his face – his eyebrows drawn in and up a little, mouth agape – only because it's an unfamiliar expression on him.

"It was, like, _one_ thing," is all he winds up saying. Some bullshit press do last week, and Louis had stayed in bed with his phone on silent all day. He'd half expected someone to turn up at the door and drag him off to where he was meant to be. Good that they didn't, since it let him feel worse about the whole thing.

"Yeah, but… gonna have to go back to work soon," Niall tries. "We do have some things coming up. And, I mean, even Elise hasn't been able to get ahold of you."

Louis scoffs and scrunches down into the blanket again, glaring sightlessly at the TV. It feels weird to be talking to a human in person, like he might be dreaming. "Don't need anything personally assisted, do I, or else I'd let her know," he mutters.

Niall's quiet for a minute, and Louis can almost hear the tactful gears turning in his head as he tries to figure out how to get the derailed conversation back on track.

"I'm on break," Louis adds before he can say anything. "God, way to fucking corner me, you know? Just roll up into my bloody house, like, how long were you in here before you found me? Did you go room to room? Like I might be dead or something?"

"Jesus, no," Niall says. "Wasn't that long, I mean, I heard the TV." Louis wonders if he registered what a wreck the rest of the place is on his way through – the smell of trash and molding dishes in the kitchen, all the shades drawn, drawers and cabinets left open at random, clothes on the floor and the bed unmade.

Niall's still studying him, looking at a loss, and finally he picks up the remote and pauses the DVD. Louis makes a useless noise of protest, does nothing to stop it. He's reminded somehow of bickering over the telly back on tour, on the bus with Niall and the rest of them, when this had all felt easier. When he wasn't staring ahead to the next year or two or however fucking many, realizing how exhausted he was by it, how unable to keep moving forward.

"D'you wanna, like… can we talk?" Niall asks. "D'you want tea or something?"

"What's to talk about?"

"What you've… been up to? On break?"

"Haven't been up to anything.”

"You look a bit like Jesse Pinkman." The corner of Niall's mouth twitches in an attempt at a smile as he jerks a thumb at the TV screen, glancing behind him, where Jesse is numbly playing violent video games in a drug-fueled stupor.

Louis scowls. "Fuck off," he says, barely any force behind it.

"Okay." Niall stands. "Well, c'mon anyway." He nods in the direction of the kitchen and holds out a hand. Louis stares at him, then scoffs, claws his way out of the blanket and gets up on his own.

He wishes he could sink back into the soft folds of his high. Niall's dragged him out into the cold, where people want things from him, where he disappoints them.

"Have you talked to your mum?" Niall asks as Louis follows him through the dark hall into the marginally less dark kitchen, where the late autumn light is doing its best to get in through the blinds. It's evening, Louis surmises from the clock on the oven. He's not sure how long he's been awake. Been stoned since he got out of bed, like all the days before.

"Yeah," he says. "She's got Bruce, you might have noticed."

"I talked to her," Niall confesses. "She said you were just taking some time for yourself." He licks his lips. "After Eleanor."

Louis registers the name like a hiccup, like tripping on something small and easily avoided, and doesn't respond. It's been a few weeks now since she left him. The boys all know, at least he assumes they do – it was in the tabloids and that. Louis hasn't been out much since, or online. Doesn't really care to know what people are saying about him.

He sits in a kitchen chair and watches Niall start to make tea on autopilot. He looks in the cabinets for clean mugs and doesn't find any. "They're all dirty," Louis tells him, helpfully. He's had the housekeeper stop coming, wanting to make his alone time official.

"That they are." Niall pulls two out of the Jenga-tower of molding dishes in the sink, frowning, and cleans them with fingertips and the meager remains of the dish soap. "Anyway," he says, "so, with that and all. We thought we probably ought to check in."

"We," Louis says. "Are the others off hiding somewhere?"

"No." Niall frowns. "Just me. We, uh – well, I don't know. They sort of thought I'd have the best luck. 'Cause I kept saying you'd do the same if it was one of us, and Liam was like – that he couldn't even imagine it, you know. But I guess I think I can." He tucks his lips between his teeth, his mouth a line. "And they all have, like, obligations."

"Girlfriends and bullshit."

Niall inclines his head. "And you… I mean, you always take care of me, like. Take care of us." He clears his throat, and Louis shuts his eyes. "So. Here I am."

"What can't Liam imagine?" Louis asks, apparently rhetorically, because Niall just studies him, doesn't reply. Louis stares at Bruce's empty water bowl in the corner. "I'm _fine_."

Niall pours them tea and sits with Louis at the kitchen table and goes on not saying anything, probably waiting for Louis to start rattling off the confessions, explaining why it is he's shut himself up in his house with his phone ignored on a side table in his bedroom for days on end. He plays with the steam coming off the top of his mug, contemplates sticking his fingers in it, wonders how bad they'd scald.

"Don't," Niall says softly. He catches Louis' fingers, brings them to the table and holds onto them. "You'll burn yourself."

Louis shrugs and twists his fingers out of Niall's grip. The human contact felt strange after so many days without it, leaves him aching a little, hating the part of himself that wants Niall to stay. The part of him that needs people's help, that doesn't deserve it anyhow.

"So this is like an intervention, right?" he asks dully. His head's clearing slightly now that he's in the light of the kitchen and he's moved for the first time all day.

"Nah," Niall says, trying a laugh. "if it was, we'd all be here. Would've surprised you with biscuits and nametags, and, I don't know. I've never actually been to an intervention."

"Neither have I," Louis says, and then he smiles. It catches him off guard, like it's escaped his mouth by accident. "Biscuits, nametags, biscuits wearing nametags."

Niall snorts. "You're high."

"Yeah," Louis sighs, but the tension's been cut.

"So… are you doing okay, then?”

"You keep bloody asking," Louis says. "I don't know." He swallows, licks his lips, takes a sip of tea that burns the roof of his mouth and all the way down his throat. "Been a bit low, I guess," he mumbles, really quiet, so maybe Niall won't catch it.

"Yeah," Niall says, "looks like it." He's using his best firm-but-kind voice, like he's babysitting. It makes Louis feel rotten inside. "Is it just, like, the break-up, or?"

Louis thinks about it, and realizes halfway through doing so that Niall's getting him to talk about it. Sneaky bastard and his gentle persistence. "I don't know," he says again, because it's the truth. All this shit and El was kind of chicken and egg – he's not sure if her leaving him brought it on, or if him being like this made her want to go. "I'm not really someone you'd want to be dating right now, anyway."

Niall clicks his tongue. "Hey," he says, like he's going to contradict it, but apparently he can't figure out how to do it. Louis laughs, humorless.

"No, it's fine," he says. "I mean – I'm a dick, you know? That's what it comes down to. We weren't going anywhere and I was never gonna change, and she chucked me. Shit happens."

Niall just stares at him, chewing on his lower lip, biting at the corner of it with his canine so it looks like he's snarling.

"Careful," Louis mumbles into his mug, "your face is gonna stick like that." Another smile tries to crawl out of his mouth, but he swallows it back down with his tea. There's a lot of stuff he could say but doesn't want to. He likes it where it is – inside, curdling. In the strangest way it makes him feel awake. That dullness is all he's felt for ages now, like a lingering headache.

Niall lets his worried lip go from between his teeth and stands up. "Have you eaten?"

"Not hungry."

Niall opens the fridge, which is pitifully barren, a bit of wilting veg and bottles of flat tonic and old leftovers from the delivery Louis has been ordering more days than not. Milk -- not expired, but he's been dipping into his emergency reserves of the long-lasting ultra-heat pasteurized kind to get by with tea and cereal. "What did you eat?"

"I don't know. Been snacking." The coffee table in the living room is a graveyard of empty bags of crisps, crusting cereal bowls.

"Well." Niall shuts the fridge. "We'll deal with that tomorrow." Louis wonders if he ate before he came, assumes the answer is yes and doesn't ask. "I'm gonna try to tackle your dishes."

"Jesus, I don't need you fucking mothering me, Niall."

"It'll help." He sounds determined. "I clean, sometimes, when I need to clear my head. Or just distract myself."

"So I'm gonna watch you clean, then?"

Niall smiles, big and warm, like he's just happy something's finally sticking. "Sure," he says, standing with a scrape of his chair. "Worth a try."

"God," Louis says, watching dispassionately as Niall goes to work on the sink. "Why're you doing that?" he asks as Niall scrubs the crusty leavings of pasta sauce and other simple shit Louis' been surviving on from the plates.

"It'll come out dirty if you don't give it a rinse before," Niall says as he puts the forks in all facing the right way up.

Louis doesn't use his own dishwasher, like, ever. His skin prickles with the anxiety of wanting Niall to leave and stay in equal measures. "Fuck." He stands up. "Just let me do it."

"I've got it," Niall says, looking around.

"Move," Louis says, hip-checking him at the sink and relieving him of the plate he's washing. He ignores the shaking of his own hands as he puts it in the dishwasher and picks up a glass, bits of lime stuck to the inside. A vodka tonic a few days ago, maybe.

"Do my own godforsaken dishes," he mumbles. "I can take care of myself, Niall."

He realizes then that he's fishing for a contradiction, or maybe an affirmation, something. But Niall doesn't say anything, just watches his face from close beside him. Louis runs the glass under the too-hot water, scrubs some foreign substance from the rim of it with the scratchy side of the sponge. The water leaves his stiff fingers red and angry.

The glass is slick with suds and as he turns to put it in the dishwasher, it slips from his weak grip and shatters on the floor. The crash is ear-splitting. Shards of glass skitter off in every direction, under the lowered door of the dishwasher and the fridge, into the corners of the molding. Louis stands frozen, staring down at the place where it hit the floor.

"Dammit," he says.

"Oh, bugger." Niall frowns down at the broken glass like he feels bad for it. "That's okay. You alright?"

"Yeah." Louis hasn't moved.

"Stay there, you haven't got shoes, just – let me get a broom." Niall looks around, uncertain.

"Hall closet," Louis says, flat. Niall picks his way out of the room, and Louis drops into a crouch, picking up the big pieces he can reach. His hands are shaking worse than before, his arms too, and there's a lump in his throat that's only getting worse with every second he's aware of it.

Niall comes back with the broom and dustpan. "Careful, now," he says, picking back to where Louis is squatting with his cupped hands full of broken glass. He looks up at Niall, and it's like an offering: _Here are the shards of my wasted fucking life. I can't figure out how to put them back together; maybe you'll have better luck._

"Here," Niall says, setting out the dustpan. "Put 'em in." Louis dumps the glass and turns his hands over, looking for cuts while Niall sweeps around his feet, but there aren't any. He can feel something rising in him, an acid tide, and he braces himself on the dishwasher door with tight fingers.

"Fuck," Louis bites out, and he picks up a plate, stands too quick so the blood rushes to his feet and makes his head spin. "Fuck!"

He whiffs the plate hard into the basin of the mostly empty sink. It shatters, on a wicked curve.

"Whoa, stop." Niall reaches for him, jerks back when Louis grabs a dirty glass and throws it hard, overhand, at the wall. "Louis, Jesus, stop it." He gets a hand around Louis' wrist, and they almost wrestle where they stand for a moment, Louis twisting instinctively against Niall's tight grip while Niall forces his arm down by his side, takes hold of his other wrist in the same hand and keeps him still. His cheeks are the blotchy red they get when he's stressed out. Louis' ears are ringing, his chest rising and falling rapidly, vision a little dim at the edges. He registers distantly that he's stepped on some tiny bits of glass, and the bottoms of his feet are stinging.

There are five more plates in the dishwasher and he can feel his muscles jumping toward them, wanting to just go on smashing it all to pieces like the fuck-up he is. One's an accident; more than that, some semblance of control.

"Jesus Christ, Lou." Niall steers him toward the kitchen table. "Careful," he says, eyes sweeping for fragments of glass and ceramic on the floor ahead of Louis' bare feet. His voice is tight, and Louis registers distantly that this is the closest he's been to showing fear over this since he first got here. _And you thought me being stoned on the couch in the dark was bad_ , Louis thinks. _Stick around and see how bad it gets._

He lets himself be sat down, clenches and unclenches his sweaty fists in his lap. Niall pulls a chair around and sits in front of him.

“Did you step on anything?” he asks. “Lemme see.”

“Christ,” Louis groans, but he lets Niall lift his foot into his lap and sweep his thumbs over it, staring at the opposite wall. Hisses as Niall touches the little shards that Louis' cut himself on. Niall dislodges them, then gets a wet paper towel and cleans him up, business-like, both feet.

“Those'll be fine,” he says. “Not even bleeding anymore.”

Louis doesn't say anything. He stacks his feet on top of each other on the floor.

Niall is still studying him, and he leans forward, so close their knees bump. He takes Louis' hands at the wrists again, gentler this time.

"Talk to me," he says, seeking out Louis' gaze insistently and then holding it. Louis grits his teeth.

"Sometimes you just want to break shit," he says.

"I know, man, but–"

"You don't know." Louis tries to pull away again, feels the heat of Niall's fingers slide against his skin, just tight enough to keep him there. "God, you have no fucking idea what this is like. Being – being the group fuck-up. Being the one who gets dumped by his girlfriend. Being the oldest, and everything. Can't go two seconds on the bloody Internet without someone – without being called a fag or being told I can't sing, that I've got no fucking prospects, nothing. I'm fucking useless. That's it."

He takes a breath, and it would be the moment for Niall to counter any part of it, but he's just staring at Louis, silent and attentive. Louis feels heat in his cheeks, pulls away again. This time Niall lets him go. "I haven't been out," he says, "because I don't – I just want some fucking time with it. Alright? I'm wallowing. It's a free country," he finishes bitterly.

"We've all got our shit, mate," Niall says. "Some's worse, some's better, I dunno. I feel like it's more about if you let it get to you than how bad it is or isn't."

"Oh, brilliant advice, Niall, thanks. I'll just switch this off, shall I? Rise above it? Is that what you do?"

"I'm not comparing notes with you," Niall says, his voice low and even beneath the high careen of Louis'. "Just saying it's possible not to care if you don't want to, for the most part, anyway."

Louis drinks the rest of his lukewarm tea so he won't have to respond to that, dimly aware that Niall's fingers have migrated to his knee, thumb sweeping back and forth, like the best way he knows to help with this is by maintaining some kind of contact.

"Well, not that it needs saying," Niall says after a while, "but you're not useless."

Louis laughs, short, almost a cough.

"Not to me," Niall insists. "Not to a lot of people. Feeling useless and being useless are two different things."

It's so unrelenting, the way he's touching Louis, his soft voice, the cleaning, the easy presence, that Louis could hit him, or cry into his shoulder until all this poisonous shit inside him was gone.

He's spared the trouble of choosing one of those when Niall goes on, "D'you want me to stick around for a while? Help you… like, clean up a bit and stuff? Keep you company?"

"I don't need minding," Louis says through set teeth.

"But you do need someone to make you lists and help with the fitted sheet while you make your bed and listen to you whinge until you feel a bit more human," Niall says, smiling a little. "I can be that. Love to be that."

It prods at something tender and raw deep inside Louis, that feeling again that he's a cancer, infecting everything that's near him. Dragging Niall down into the depths of this.

"You don't have to," he mumbles.

"Look, mate, it's like I said. You spent a lot of time looking after me. After my surgery and everything. And... " he swallows a bit thickly and plows on before Louis can process it, "just all the time. And – we need you back, y'know? Or we're gonna, pretty soon. We've got X-Factor and shit in December, and then rehearsals. And then tour. It's not just about you. I know–" he preempts when Louis opens his mouth to disagree somehow – "but, just, lemme return the favor. Get _you_ back on your feet, for once. Think you've earned it," and he tilts his head toward the shards of smashed kitchenware still all over the floor. "Bit of looking after."

And that's what makes Louis laugh, after everything: that he's had an honest-to-God tantrum in the middle of his filthy kitchen and all Niall's doing is asking for permission to keep him from doing it again. He deserves so little of this. A fraction of a fraction of it. He should just tell Niall to go.

"Fine," he says, shaking his head, and more when Niall's face lifts. "Stay, you fucking weirdo."

"Okay," Niall says. His brightness sounds forced, but it fits how Louis is feeling. "Great."

He cleans the rest of the broken dishes up after that while Louis watches, feet pulled up under his thighs in his kitchen chair, numb.

"So what now?" Niall asks when he's done, dusting his hands off even though they're clean.

Louis scoffs. "Your party, mate, I don't know."

"D'you want to talk anymore, or…?" Niall looks a little lost, and Louis thinks meanly that he should have come with a better game plan if he wanted Louis to play along.

"You know, if I knew how to do whatever this is, don't you think I'd be doing it already?"

"Fair," Niall says, which makes Louis feel awful because he wasn't being fair at all. "Go and get your computer, then, I'll make you some lists."

Louis laughs, because he doesn't know what else to do. His computer's in the living room, back on the loveseat under the duvet he'd spent the rest of his week buried in until Niall showed up and started trying to pull him back into reality.

That's how he is when Niall follows him into the room a few minutes later with two fresh mugs of tea: cocooned again in a big sad blanket cloud with his computer sitting out next to him. Breaking Bad, neglected, is playing its DVD menu on a loop. A dramatic Southwestern soundtrack for whatever the hell Niall's about to do to him.

Niall puts the mugs on the coffee table, giving Louis a fond smile while he glares around aimlessly. "Budge up," he says, sitting down and sticking his now-bare toes under the blanket, knees drawn up. He opens Louis' laptop and starts to type almost immediately.

"What're we making lists of?" Louis asks grudgingly. He snakes a hand out for his tea.

"Tasks," Niall says. "I dunno, a to-do list. My mum always said to give yourself, like, one attainable goal a day, at least, just to feel like you were getting somewhere. Thought that might be good for you."

Louis just closes his eyes and burrows deeper into the comforter.

"We oughta call Elise," Niall says, laptop keys clacking gently under his fingertips, "and put the dishes away, and we can at least organize your emails so we know what needs answering and what can wait, yeah? And we can take a shower–"

"We?"

"I mean, sorry." Niall coughs out a laugh, and when Louis pokes his head out of the blanket he can see he's gone pink. "Royal we, innit."

"You can take a shower too," Louis sighs, retreating into his comforter again, sipping at his tea. "Or else you'll smell worse than me."

"Not sure that's possible," Niall says thoughtfully, and before Louis can fire back he's adding, "also, I was thinking." Then he goes quiet for a moment, edges his toes under Louis' thigh inside the blanket to get his attention. Louis looks up at him.

"What?" he asks, exasperated, when Niall keeps waffling.

"Do you want to see someone, maybe? Talk to someone?"

"Like... a therapist."

"Yeah. I think it would help."

Louis grits his teeth. "I'm not a fucking crazy person."

"I didn't say you are," Niall says. "It's just talking, you know? Not even – medication, necessarily." He falters, frowning like he's waded in a bit too deep.

"Rather argue about my problems with my mates, wouldn't I," Louis mutters, angry at Niall for even getting him to admit that much.

"We can do that too," Niall says, wriggling his toes under Louis' weight and making him squirm away. "Might be nice to have someone objective, though."

"Are you not?"

"No," Niall says, laughing a little, oddly self-conscious. Louis frowns at him.

"I don't want to," he says flatly. Niall shrugs and types something anyway. "Give me that," Louis snaps. He grabs the computer. "Jesus, Niall, you've made a spreadsheet."

Niall grins like this is completely normal behavior. It's stupidly endearing, and Louis has to look away from him; the bright white glow of the computer is easier to stare into than Niall's face.

It's sort of a matrix: things to do every day, things to check off, things that might help. Cooking a meal, doing a load of laundry, cleaning a room or else calling the housekeeper back in. Calling other people. Songwriting. Louis' heart hurts.

"Can we just… start tomorrow," he says, hearing it come out a whine. The prospect of dealing with undealt-with things is making him feel bone-tired, knowing no matter what he does that it won't be good enough.

"Yeah," Niall says, soft. He's still looking at Louis, but the smile has faded from his mouth.

"What's that face for," Louis mumbles. "I told you I don't need you feeling sorry for me." Even as he says it, though, he grasps that Niall's acknowledgment of any part of this has made Louis feel realer than he has in weeks. Actualized, like he's at least slightly more than nothing.

"It's not like that," Niall says in that same tone of voice. He doesn't elaborate, just keeps looking at him. Louis stares down at the mussed-up suede of the couch, the place where Niall's feet disappear into the blanket and the point of near-contact concealed within, and doesn't say anything back.

The threat of conversation ebbs after that, and Niall finds the remote in the couch cushions, hands it to Louis like a peace offering and lets him find his place in Breaking Bad. Louis watches with his chin nearly on his chest, not caring about anything. It's getting late; no light creeping in around the drawn curtains.

The first sound that really makes an impact on him comes maybe an episode later, when the rhythm of Niall's breathing changes. Louis looks over. He's asleep, his head tipped back on the arm of the couch, body scrunched down, mouth open and his breaths short and soundful. His feet are still under Louis' duvet.

Louis sighs and dislodges himself as gingerly as he can. This odd instinct is rising to the surface now that Niall's no longer an active participant in all this – an instinct that makes him unwrap the duvet from himself, letting the cold rush in, makes him drape it over Niall and shut the TV off. He pads upstairs feeling marginally more human for it, having someone who needs caring for other than himself.

*

He's been sleeping so much lately that it's easy to nod off now, especially if he finishes smoking what's left in the bowl on his bedside table before he does it. The hard part's when he wakes in the early morning light and has to sit there looking ahead to the day, imagining all the nothing he'll get up to just as he did the day before.

But tonight he wakes sooner than that, when it's still dark, the night only half gone. The limbo of it makes him feel ghostly, as if he's half-disappeared, and he lies there a bit longer before turning on the lamp. The evening with Niall feels like it happened in a dream; Louis can't remember what he committed to, if anything.

His phone is somewhere in this room, but looking at it would mean confronting all the days-old notifications gathering dust there. Twitter DMs from assholes, Mirror articles. Daily schedules that either say _no obligations_ or list a few things that feel beyond him at the moment, even at their simplest. It's an argument he has with himself every day – whether to deal with all that shit, knowing the moment he considers it that he won't, feeling all the worse for it.

There's a couple of books on his nightstand that Eleanor left, beside his favorite pipe and a pill bottle with an eighth of weed in it, and he picks them up for the first time and shuffles them around. One's about climate change or something and the other's a collection of essays by Joan Didion. He thumbs through the pages, imagines he can smell Eleanor's perfume on them and then he feels really sad, alone in this giant bed. He's lost her, and it feels better at some cold gnarled root of it to know that he's the one who drove her away. It's so easy to hate himself. Easier than doing anything else.

She's scribbled in the margins of the Didion book, a habit he remembers so well. Always wanting to know what she was writing and she rarely wanted to tell him. On the first page of an essay called "On Self-Respect" she's written in tiny blue-ink script, _it is not enough to exist competently_. It shoots through Louis like a pain, and he snaps the book shut.

"Bit of light reading?"

Niall's in the doorway. Louis puts the books back on the side table, shrugging.

"They're El's," he says gruffly. "Not really my thing."

Niall comes in and sits on the end of the bed. "That book, or books in general?"

Louis cocks an eyebrow at him and Niall huffs out a laugh through his nose.

"I wanted to check on you," he says. "Woke up on the couch and you'd gone. I wasn't sure... "

"If I could find my way to my own bed?"

Niall shrugs, smiling sleepily. "You alright?"

Louis shrugs. "I just wake up sometimes. Weed makes you sleep weird, you know. Better, but… weird sometimes." He trails off, confused that he's just volunteered such a sane answer to an easily dodged question. Niall nods, and there's an off moment then where neither of them knows what comes next.

"Well then," Niall says, scrunching at the covers. "Can I grab the guest room?"

"Oh, yeah. There's… sheets, somewhere. In the closet in there, I think."

"I'll figure it out. Thanks. I could drive home, but." He shrugs, and he sounds oddly hopeful when he adds, "This way I'm here to make breakfast, right?"

Louis can't help smiling a tiny bit, that Niall really meant staying when he said it. That Louis didn't have to ask, that Niall's so absurdly low-maintenance even when he's forcing his way into all of Louis' shit. It leaves him feeling warm.

But his throat tightens as he watches Niall stand up – not like earlier when he'd broken the glass, softer somehow, much worse. He knows this feeling. Thinks about sleeping on his own like he has been for weeks, waking up late, nothing changing. Thinks of what El had written in her book: how just getting through doesn't make him okay.

"Niall," he says. His voice is a little shaky, louder than he'd meant for it to be in the quiet of the room. Niall looks around.

"You could just stay," Louis mumbles. "Here, I mean, just…" he swallows thickly, nods to the other side of the bed and can't keep going.

"You want me to sleep here?” Louis can't meet his eye, but he nods the tiniest bit. “Hey, sure," Niall says. He comes back in and then stops short. "Can I borrow some boxers or something?"

Louis nods and points to the dresser. He hasn't touched it in days, keeps most of his clothes in a rotation from a pile on the floor, but there's probably something in there. Niall finds a pair, goes into the ensuite to pee and comes back in Louis' shorts. They're big on him, sitting low on his skinny hips.

"Didn't you bring a suitcase?" Louis asks, with no energy to make it cut.

Niall shrugs, slipping under the sheets. "Not like I'd set out to move in with you when I showed up. I was just...seeing."

"Worse than you thought, am I?"

"Nah, just." Niall sighs, shakes his head against the pillow. "You're alright," he says. "Just having a bad spell, aren't you."

"When you say it like that," Louis says dryly, staring at the ceiling, ignoring the knot still in his throat. Niall's looking at him, probably waiting for him to say more.

And Louis wants to, is the weird thing – all of it feels new somehow, like he's resetting. He rolls over and switches off the lamp and comes back a little closer to Niall, the particular comfort in feeling another body nearby in his bed, breathing, co-existing.

"I've been really lonely," he offers into the silence. "Especially – like this, know what I mean? That's the hardest thing, just. Someone's, like, in your space so much, for such a long time, and then they're just gone."

Niall gives a hum in answer beside him, maybe too sleepy to do anything but listen.

"It was my fault," Louis murmurs, and the words get caught in his throat.

"Shh," Niall says, and he reaches out when Louis looks at him, touches his wrist and then thumbs into his palm. He pulls at him until Louis goes pliant, too tired to fight anymore. He lets Niall fold them together in a crooked line, his cheek against Niall's chest and his arms between them, one hand curled into the fabric of his tee.

It would be good to cry now, he thinks, but the tears won't come. Instead he feels a pressure in him, like something's caged there, clawing and unable to get out. Niall rubs circles on his back, strokes his hair, breathes with him in time until there's a rhythm to it: short on the inhale, long coming out. Louis wonders what he's thinking. It's hot under the covers, and they fall back asleep with their bodies pressed together.

*

**(tuesday)**

He wakes to the sound of the front door opening downstairs and the little chime of the alarm that means someone's let themselves in and out with a key. The other side of the bed is empty, and it smells like the shower's been running. The clock on the bedside table says it's nearly noon.

"Niall," he groans, loud.

"Morning!" comes the yell from downstairs. It's too fucking early for this shit. Louis rolls over, presses his face into his pillow, but he slept like the dead and now he's wide awake.

He hears Niall's footsteps on the stairs, and then his voice at the door. "How's it going?"

Louis grunts into his pillow.

"I'm making breakfast," Niall says. He strides into the room like a parent, opens the shades so the sun lances in. Louis squawks in protest. "Come down if you like."

He's gone before Louis can ask for details, weigh if it's worth it, but a few minutes later he smells bacon and it draws him grudgingly out of bed. He shuffles downstairs, squinting. Niall's opened all the other curtains, too, light streaming in, and it makes the house feel huge and full of air, makes Louis a little dizzy for a second. He feels the vitamin D worm its way into his unwashed skin and shivers with it, scowling, before going into the kitchen.

Niall's bustling around as though he ought to be wearing a chef's hat and an apron: bacon sizzling on the stove, toast in the toaster, a mug of tea and a glass of OJ already waiting for Louis on the table.

"How d'you want your eggs?"

Louis frowns at all of it. "Over medium," he says, slightly annoyed it's not something he wants to say no to. "Did you go shopping?"

"Just brought it all over from my place," he says. "We'll order some shit for delivery later, though, it's on the list."

"The list."

"Mhm." Niall transfers the last of the bacon to a plate and cracks a couple of eggs into the grease left in the pan.

This is the first time Louis hasn't gotten high as soon as he's woken up in at least a week, and it's not that he's itching to go and smoke up, precisely, as it just feels stupid not to be high, especially when he's about to eat all this food, and when he's got fuck-all to do for the rest of the day, and when it would probably make him more amenable to whatever Niall's going to try to get him to do.

He goes and retrieves his little vape pen from the living room, where he left it half-smoked while watching TV yesterday. Louis tries to keep at least two pieces of paraphernalia with good green left in them lying around at any given time.

Niall glances at him only briefly as he takes a hit off the vape. "Is it fun to be stoned all the time?" he asks, casually flipping the eggs in the pan in a way Louis has never mastered. "Seems like it would stop being different than normal, like, if you were never not stoned."

"Okay," Louis says. "We're gonna set some ground rules for this, alright? Rule number one is no judging. Number two is that I have my ways of coping and you don't get to tell me shit about them. And number three is you're burning the toast."

"Fuck." Niall shuts the toaster off and finagles the toast out of it with the tip of a knife. It's obviously salvageable, but Louis enjoys being a dick.

Niall scrapes at the burnt edges, facing away from Louis. Finally he turns around.

"I'm not asking you to stop," he says. "And I'm not judging. You know I'm not."

Louis lifts his chin as he looks at Niall, trying to make it a challenge, but Niall just tips his eggs out of the pan onto a plate with the least burnt pieces of toast, loads it up with bacon, hands it to him along with a fork. He grabs a bowl and some new milk that he definitely brought with him out of the fridge and sets about scrambling his own eggs.

"Do I get to have a rule?" he asks eventually, with a forced mildness.

"Maybe."

"My rule…" Niall pours his eggs into the pan and pushes them around with a wooden spoon, leans against the corner of the counter to face Louis, stirring with one hand. "My rule is that you have to, like, try. Like…" He frowns, picks up a piece of bacon to think on. "Try to work with me on this."

"This," Louis repeats flatly. He cuts into the white of one of his eggs, edges toward the yolk without breaking it.

"Feeling better," Niall tries. "Being… y'know, happy." He frowns, back to being nearly at a loss like he was yesterday. Louis hates being treated like he's sick, even though he feels as if he is. And he hates that he's making Niall uncomfortable. He hates everything about this situation except probably the breakfast aspect of it.

He shrugs, shakes his head, doesn't know what to say, and eventually the silence has stretched too long for him to even try to fill it.

Niall scrapes his scramble out of the pan and sits down, knocks his bare foot against Louis' under the table. "Won't be so bad," he says. "We're just gonna do a bit of housekeeping. Maybe go outside or something."

Louis fakes a gasp of horror that at its heart isn't so fake, but it still makes Niall laugh.

"How're those eggs?" Niall asks.

"Good," Louis mumbles. "Been a while since I ate food that wasn't bullshit."

"Nah," Niall says. "You can make eggs. I've seen you. Everyone can make eggs."

"I know," Louis says, staring at his plate. "Just been lazy." Niall chews thoughtfully, watching him.

"I ran out of pans a few days ago, alright?" Louis adds, a bit louder than necessary. "Honestly, you know, I don't care to explain my egg-making habits to you. Anyway you're here to feed me now, so it's all good, innit."

Niall makes an unsure face, nods his head from side to side.

"Whatever," Louis says, bitter for no reason. He stabs into his yolk and they both watch it ooze all over the plate.

He stands and wanders away with his vape when he's finished eating, and Niall doesn't protest. Louis can hear the clatter of dishes going in the sink as he installs himself in his corner of the living room couch, turns on the DVD player, takes a couple more hits. It's intensely weird to have company, puts him on edge.

Eventually Niall comes in and perches on the arm of the couch instead of sitting down, the way people do when they don't want to stay in the room very long.

"What d'you want to do today?"

Louis turns slowly to look at him.

"What?"

"D'you want to do anything today?"

Louis blinks at him. He wonders if Niall will pull out his spreadsheet if Louis just doesn't answer.

He chances it, goes digging in the cushions for the remote and puts on Breaking Bad. Niall's eyes are heavy on the side of his face, but he doesn't ask again.

They watch one episode together, Niall tacitly turning down an offer of a toke. When Louis lets the next episode roll, Niall gets up and trots out of the room without a word.

He doesn't come back in twenty minutes, at which point Louis turns the volume down and blinks the high out of his face and listens. He can hear Niall's voice, indistinct past the kitchen, probably in the spare bedroom back there that's full of awards and toys and miscellaneous bullshit.

Louis leaves the telly playing and pads over to the door to the hallway, listening.

"Not good, no," Niall goes, and then, "I have no idea."

A beat. "Just 'cause I'm the only one here doesn't mean I have a better idea of how to deal with it than you, alright? I'm just–" He cuts himself off, tight and frustrated. "That's what I'm–" Angry now. Louis can hear him struggling not to raise his voice. "Look, I'm dealing with this, okay? You just go and keep doing whatever it is you're doing."

Another beat, and Niall keeps the rest of his syllables clipped. "Yeah. I know. Tell her we say hi. I'll text you later. Yeah. Bye."

Louis steps into the hallway as he hears Niall hang up, so that he's in full view as Niall comes out of the back room.

"Oh," he says, slipping his phone slowly into his pocket. "Hiya."

"Who was that?"

"Payno," Niall says. Louis' a little surprised he's admitting it so easily.

"Is it Sophia I say hi to, then?"

Niall smiles. "Yeah." He fidgets when Louis doesn't say anything else. "He was just checking in," he offers. Louis snorts.

"Checking in," he repeats, nodding, then veers off to the kitchen for tea. Niall follows, watches him do the kettle and get a clean mug from the dishwasher this time. Leaning in the doorframe with his sad smile, which Louis knows is sad because his eyes are doing something different from his mouth.

Niall's hasn't moved or said a word by the time Louis finishes pouring his tea and turns around. He takes stock of the scene: himself, stoned, wrapped in a comforter, dragging it across the dusty kitchen floor. The counters and sink and the smell of the place are already cleaner than they were yesterday. And there's Niall in a fresh tee he must have gotten when he went out this morning, looking light in weight and color, like an open door.

Louis makes him a cuppa, too, hands it over, then pushes past the lifting smile on Niall's face and back into the living room for another five hours of Breaking Bad.

*

He wakes up to the sounds of the disc menu playing on loop and Niall doing something productive and aromatic in the kitchen. It's night outside, and Louis fell asleep on himself, folded up stiff. He stretches, and the pop of each joint clears his head a little more.

His hand twitches for his phone, like it does a lot, but the phone's upstairs, and laziness and avoidance are stronger forces for Louis than the self-loathing instinct to look at all the tasks he's putting off, all the shit being talked during his radio silence. It's bad enough to imagine Liam on the other end of Niall's phone call earlier – _how is he?_ and _Well, what do you think you're gonna do?_ and _Couldn't bear to see him like this, I'm glad you went, Niall._ Louis shudders a bit and goes into the kitchen.

Niall's made tacos: steak and peppers and onions, fresh guacamole, everything. He's finishing the veg in a pan, hard shells toasting in the oven, when Louis comes in.

"Jesus," Louis says. "What's the occasion?"

"Don't need an occasion for tacos," Niall says, sauteing blithely, and Louis can't really argue with that.

They build plates assembly line-style and sit at the kitchen table to eat. It's taking on an oddly familiar feeling, doing this with Niall, even though it's only been 24 hours since he showed up. Louis gets steak juice all over his hands and licks it off, studiously, and Niall smiles down at his plate, doesn't even try to offer him a napkin.

Louis thinks about being by himself for what seemed like forever, about cooking for himself or doing the best he can with minimal effort, eating alone on the couch, sleepwalking through whole days.

"Thanks," he mumbles into his taco.

Niall's spooning guac onto the pile of steak and fajita remnants on his plate. "For?"

"Is this a test?"

Niall snorts. "No."

Louis can't help smiling a little, feels a reflexive lift in his lungs from making Niall laugh. "For cooking," he says, finally, instead of _for being here, for making me exist_. He shrugs like none of it matters, but when he catches Niall's gaze he thinks he gets it.

"Barca's playing," Niall says. He takes Louis' plate and his own and dumps them in the sink, runs water on them. "Got any beer?"

"Am I allowed?" Louis asks dryly.

"Fuck off, you've been stoned all day. If that sort of thing was on my agenda, you'd know." Niall smiles, hesitant. Maybe it's good they can joke about whatever this is. It's making Louis want to scream about it a little less.

"In the fridge," he says. "Bottom drawer."

Niall's laughing as he pulls out bottles of Stella from the crisper. "This is supposed to be for vegetables, Louis."

"Well, mine's a beer crisper." He plucks an extra piece of steak from the pan on the stove, eats it with his fingers while Niall opens the beer. "Shall we?"

And it's nearly normal, lazing on the couch with him watching football, an unmeasured distance between them, cold beers in their hands. Louis is still riding a low-grade high from earlier, like he almost always is, but it feels good to drink with someone, to drink with some sense of purpose, chatting about the game like everything's fine.

He forgets, almost, until he doesn't. Until that little voice in the back of his mind stirs from its doze, says, conversationally, _He's only here because you're a fucking mess_ , and Louis' whole body goes cold.

"Y'alright?"

Niall's looking at him, concerned, and Louis supposes it must be showing on his face, that sudden drop. How hard it is to stay happy. How happiness for him is only ever temporary, an unsteady float between bouts of drowning.

He finishes his beer and gets up for another. "Yeah," he says, and walks out before Niall can ask anything else.

Later, when the game's long since ended and they're channel-surfing and it's going on late, Niall stretches out a bare foot, nudges Louis' thigh with his toes.

"You want me to stay tonight?"

"Don't care," Louis mumbles, neck bent, staring at the TV in a daze. Niall kneads at him with his toes until Louis wriggles away. "Stop that," he says, but he looks at Niall, which he knows was the point.

"I will," Niall says. "Stay, I mean. If you want. Just ask."

"I'm not fucking asking." And he wants Niall to know what he means by it, that he does want him to stay, so badly, that he's already imagining the sound of Niall leaving and the silence that would follow.

"So you want me to go?" Niall asks, and all of a sudden his voice has gone worried and thin. Louis realizes he actually thinks it could be true, that Louis wouldn't want him here. Would want this to end before it even really started.

"Fuck.” Louis scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "No, I don't.” A pause, the sound of Niall waiting and Louis' own heart skipping irrationally in his chest. "Fine, yes, stay," he blurts. "Yes, Jesus. I want you to."

"Okay," Niall sighs, shoulders dropping. He leans across the couch, squeezes the back of Louis' neck with a warm hand. "It's what I'm here for, innit," he murmurs. "Not a big deal."

Louis takes a breath, in for three, out for six, like they'd done last night. It works with the gentle pressure of Niall's palm on his skin to calm him down. He stands up, thinking of bed, wanting to not be awake anymore. Feels low again but safe, too, if only in a temporary way. Niall follows him upstairs to his room without needing to be told.

*

**(wednesday)**

They forget to close the shades, so Louis wakes with the sunrise, opens his eyes slow and dry and heavy. Niall's gotten an arm around his chest while they slept, spooned close and warm against Louis' back. Louis can feel the warmth of his rhythmic breathing on the back of his neck, the only sound in the room.

He blinks at the thin pink light easing its way through the window for a while, at the tree out there, branches all but bare with the coming winter. It looks cold outside, but in here, against Niall, it's just hot enough to keep him on the edge of sleep. Louis sinks into the space between the sensations, being wrapped up in a friend and still feeling utterly alone. Like he's the only conscious person in all of London.

He nestles back against Niall, lets it anchor him when Niall snuffles in his sleep, tightens his arm across Louis' chest. Louis drifts back off thinking about the feel of having Niall this close, the strange shape of him, and then not thinking about anything.

*

He thinks to put deodorant on when he wakes up again, Niall missing from beside him. He meets him in the kitchen feeling groggy.

"Why d'you keep getting up before me?" he asks, accepting a cup of tea and clutching it close to his face. "You should be modeling bad behavior so I feel better about myself."

"Is that how this works?"

"Yeah, mate, you've got it all backwards."

"I'll try that tomorrow," Niall says. He's making some kind of breakfast sandwich situation for the both of them. "Wouldn't mind sleeping in."

"Just don't expect me to make breakfast," Louis says. "You'll find me down here with tea at the most."

Niall has the decency to laugh, though they both know it's literally true. "It's a start," he says. "God, we'd make a shit married couple, wouldn't we?"

"But you would be a beautiful bride," Louis says, sipping his tea. Niall's still laughing, cheeks gone pink with it, and it makes Louis smile a little – the satisfaction of landing a joke. It's like he's put his humor up on a shelf somewhere, had no more use for it, and is having to take it back out for a special occasion. For Niall.

When they've sopped up the last bits of egg yolk with crusts of toast, Niall licks his lips and leans back. "So," he says. "Let's talk about keeping the kitchen in a reasonable state."

"Define reasonable."

"Usable for making and eating food," Niall says, ticking it off on his fingers, "and… not a health hazard."

Louis shrugs, can't think of a way to argue.

"So what that means is, buying food when you run out, and emptying the dishwasher when it's clean and putting stuff back in it when it's dirty, and not letting the sink pile up so much that a stiff breeze could knock that pile over, yeah?" Niall stands up, draws his palm flat across the top of the sink, which is still full of dishes from the tacos.

"Is this really necessary?"

"Gotta start somewhere," Niall says, smiling at him, determined, his jaw a bit tight. Louis wonders if he could be enough of a pill to make Niall give up on him like everyone else. He pictures Niall snapping in a way he never does, throwing up his hands, grabbing his shit and walking out not 48 hours into this little experiment. There's something grimly validating in it, the idea that he'd even get to Niall sunshine Horan in the end.

Niall opens the dishwasher and pulls out the silverware rack. "C'mon," he says, holding it up Louis' direction. Louis rolls his eyes.

"It's my day off, mum," he says.

Niall gives the cutlery a stubborn little rattle. "I'm not your mum," he says, "I'm your mate. It's just this one thing, Louis."

Louis keeps staring at him, trying to push it, waiting for Niall to break. Neither of them blinks, until finally Niall's eyes water and he bursts out laughing.

"Fuck," he says, blinking rapidly. "You're a stubborn bastard, you know?"

"I do indeed."

Niall smiles at him, and after all of it it's still like Louis is his favorite thing. Louis is no stranger to that look Niall gets sometimes – adoration never more blinding than it is on his face. Louis has never felt like he's done anything to deserve it.

Niall holds out the silverware. "Now c'mon," he says.

Louis gapes at him, and then he laughs, incredulous, but something makes him get up and take the damn thing off Niall's hands anyway.

"Go fetch me any dirty dishes from the other rooms when you've finished that," Niall adds, scrubbing at a plate. Louis raises his eyebrows and Niall ignores him, whistling McFly.

He puts the forks where the forks go and the knives where the knives go and even bungees the measuring spoons back together on their little ring and puts them in their proper drawer. Niall keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye and smiling to himself, like he's proud. It makes Louis feel ridiculous, but it's undeniably comforting, too – the mindlessness of an easy task, and Niall's reedy whistling, the rhythm of moving around each other to finish the chore.

There are dirty dishes hidden in what seems like every room of the house. Niall's putting away clean plates when Louis returns the first load to the sink – three dried-out empty mugs of tea hanging from each hand – and shuffles off for more.

Midday light is pooling on the floor in his room upstairs, flooding in the window with its obstinately open shades. Louis goes still, looking at it, and there's a moment where he really wants to be outside breathing that light in. The sensation passes, but he wonders at it still, how it feels to want to do something on his own at all.

The dishes are done in an absurdly short amount of time that makes Louis feel like shit for never doing them himself. His kitchen looks so clean, it's as if he's just moved in.

"This is gonna be one of those things where, like, your mum cleaned your room and now you can't find anything," he says, peering in cabinets to see where Niall's decided to put everything. "How did you know where it all went?"

Niall shrugs. "I've been here before."

"You are a strange little person," Louis states. "You can memorize the full layout of my kitchen, and yet you can't remember what you were doing two minutes ago." He sprawls into a chair at the kitchen table, yawning. "Now what?"

"What would you normally be up to around now?" Niall asks, leaning against the counter, hands shoved under his biceps.

"I dunno." Unbidden, Louis gets a flash of Netflix and video games moving in a blur, himself at the center of it, a motionless lump of blankets on his couch that only stirs to get a new cup of tea or move to bed, even with Niall there. "Probably same as yesterday," he says, feeling guiltier than he sounds.

Niall has his phone out now, scrolling through something. "Would you consider doing some laundry?"

"What are you looking at?" Niall flashes it at him. "Ah, the list. I might have guessed."

"So, laundry, yeah? It'll take two seconds."

"What am I meant to be washing?"

"I don't know, Lou, clothes. Towels. Whatever."

Louis spreads his hands, like he can't go any further until Niall figures it out, and Niall lets out a short sigh.

"Look, I'm here for moral support, yeah?" Niall says. "But you're a grown-up. You can figure out what sort of laundry you need to do. Christ."

It's the last word, under Niall's breath, that makes Louis flinch. Niall looks sorry as soon as he says it, and that's worse, and it's all so much more than Louis wants to deal with. It's just that it's impossible not to take advantage of his hand-holding, and it's feeding this monster in Louis every time it gets Niall frustrated – that shriveled-up, insidious thing, whispering as he tests Niall's patience, _You drive everyone away._

He turns and walks out, up the stairs, leaving Niall standing in his kitchen with an unnecessary apology on the tip of his tongue.

Niall finds him on the floor of the little laundry room 15 minutes later, sitting against the churning washing machine with his knees drawn up to his chest, head tipped down. Louis is focusing on breathing, his eyes squeezed shut, and he doesn't know Niall's there until he feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," Niall says, bending down. Louis looks blearily up at him, and Niall sits down. He doesn't say anything for a while, too long, until Louis starts to be conscious of the sound his breathing makes, the minute motions of his own body next to Niall's easy stillness.

Finally Niall says, quietly, "Sorry I was a bit short back there."

"S'alright, you have a tall personality," Louis deadpans. Niall chuckles, soft huffs of breath.

"Laundry's going," he says, tipping his head back against the rumbling machine.

"Yeah."

Niall glances at him. "Good job," he says, sounding unsure. "See? Not so bad."

"I know it's not," Louis says, staring hard at his knees, the worn fabric of his laundry day sweats. The pair he's been wearing more often than not lately is in the wash with more clothes, his sheets, a towel.

Niall's said that about so many things in the past couple of days, _not so bad_. It's not the point that things are easy or that they're not. Louis doesn't know how to make him see the difference.

"I _can_ do this, you know?" he says. Niall makes a sound, and Louis talks over him, "Just – listen." He bites his lip. "I'm not… I could, like, function, if I wanted. It's not that I have some kind of problem with any of this shit, I mean, I've been lazy, I am lazy, yeah, but –" He chews on his lower lip, hunting for the words, dragging them up through the tightness in his throat. "Do you ever have that feeling like everyone's looking for you to prove something about yourself to them? Like, to show 'em you're good enough, because… they think they've got you figured out. But it really doesn't matter what you show them, is the thing, because nothing's gonna be good enough. D'you know what I mean? So – why try, if you're always gonna disappoint everyone? Why waste your time?"

"This is about more than laundry, isn’t it?" Niall asks, and Louis huffs out a laugh.

"You can't disappoint anyone if you don't try," he mumbles, and he sees Niall's face pinch a little, like the words are a fleeting pain.

Louis stares at his own hands, curled between his thighs and his chest. He doesn't want the words to come out, but they do anyway.

"Why are you here?" he asks.

"'Cause I missed you," Niall says, no hesitation. “Wanted to help you feel better.” And that's what makes Louis feel like his chest is caving in. He bends in on himself, takes it like a punch. Niall puts an arm around his shoulders and Louis stays still, putting tension on it, wanting to sink into the floor.

"You know,” he says, “what it was, after El left – I just didn't want to be around people.” The words are bitter in his mouth. "Didn't want everyone judging me. Fuck knows I've had enough of that for a lifetime. I just wanted to sit with it a little. Like, try to face up to all the shit that made her leave, the shit that makes people see me differently than the rest of you–"

"They don't, Lou."

"But I just –” and it takes him a long time to figure out what comes next. “Sometimes I really don't think I'm up for this, you know,” he says. “Keeping up with this – celebrity bullshit. And touring. And being under everybody's fucking microscope. Just... on and on and on, like, that was the problem. Sometimes I don't wanna do it anymore." His voice cracks and he shuts his mouth, swallowing around the tightness in his throat. His eyes are dry, but he has the caged feeling again. Crawling out of his skin.

"Alright," Niall says. "Listen to me, now. Forget the judging, first of all. Forget every fucker who nothing's ever good enough for 'em. You're better than that. You don't need 'em." He squeezes Louis' shoulders, gives him a stilted little shake. "You're good at this," he says. "We can't do it without you. Don't forget that, alright? The people that know you – that's who matters, innit?"

"Eleanor knows me," Louis murmurs. "And she left." And the worst part, the part he doesn't know how to say, is that losing her hadn't hurt as half badly as the confirmation that everything he hates most about himself – impotence, weakness, all the reasons she didn't want him anymore – were real.

Niall's mouth twists, and the rhythmic sloshing of the washer fills the pause that follows. "I know you, too," he says. "And… I'm not going anywhere." 

Louis' mouth ducks. "I know," he sighs. Niall's too good to him.

"That other thing you said," Niall tries, "That you thought maybe sitting in it would help. I think… maybe there's a difference between sitting in it, and getting through it? Maybe you're just thinking in circles?"

Louis laughs despite everything, feels it ease the weight in his chest by just a fraction. "Yeah."

He feels Niall's nose brush the hair at his temple, feels himself being pulled again and goes with it this time, leans into Niall, head on his shoulder. He smells good, and it's comforting. For a while, the washer rumbling against their backs is the only sound.

"Thanks," Louis mutters. "For… listening. And. Yeah."

Niall breathes out a laugh. "I'm trying, Tommo. I am."

*

They sprawl out on Louis' bare mattress after that and get stoned and order groceries for delivery. Louis feels a bit like he's being rewarded for something but he doesn't question it, and anyway it's a treat to see Niall high. He'd forgotten what this was like, he realizes, the feeling of actually having fun while stoned. Of laughing at Niall filling out the order form with ridiculous shit, PopTarts and a rotisserie chicken and four kinds of juice and all these spices and fruits Louis has never heard of.

He voices this thought as well as he can, and Niall looks up at him with bloodshot eyes and a big dumb grin on his face.

"That's the difference, you know?" he says once he's schooled his features a little. "Between a coping mechanism and, like – something that stops being a fun thing and starts being one of the shitty things."

"It's never _shitty_."

"Yeah, but – better if it's, like, fun." Niall's eyes sparkle dully. Louis feels like he's getting a lot out of looking at his face. He feels like he's a lot more stoned than he has been in the recent past, too – probably the fact that it's with someone, which always compounds a high. Takes you out of your head and puts you in the confusing world.

They buy a truly astonishing amount of groceries, and Niall says, "That should get us through the week," as he places the order, and they both collapse on themselves laughing. Louis feels like he's ascending, climbing up out of the low point of earlier, the low point of the past few weeks. Onto the next lowest ledge at least. Like in the third Batman film.

He makes a small resolution: to try not to waste his weed on being bored anymore. Doesn't tell Niall, doesn't want to drag Niall down with shit-talk about his issues when Niall's so goofily blissed out, rolling around on the mattress pad. He just watches him instead, sticks his feet in Niall's way so he rolls over him, tangles them up, takes him down laughing with his face smushed into Louis' chest.

Niall ends up on his hands and knees over top of Louis for a second, flushed and grinning down at him. He takes up Louis' entire field of vision, all his senses, sight and smell and sound, and Louis goes breathless for the strangest moment. He makes himself scrabble his fingers over Niall's sides to break it, sends him tumbling down and twisting away, cackling.

Niall pulls up his spreadsheets after that and asks Louis what his goals are, and it makes Louis laugh until he sees that Niall's just sitting there patiently, giggling a little, fingers on the keyboard.

"You're serious?" Niall nods. "Fuck, I don't know. What are your goals?"

"Don't change the subject." Niall starts to type. "You shouldn't miss any more gigs."

"They weren't _gigs_ –"

"–and you should get on your phone again. Just, like, a normal amount, you know? Tweet something. Let the world know you're alive."

"Fuck." Louis blinks, trying not to feel bowled over by the abrupt transition back to this shit. Niall doesn't seem to compartmentalize the intervention type of thing from just hanging out. Part of his master plan, probably. "I guess – eventually, yeah."

"Not now," Niall agrees, "you're high."

"Yeah." Louis' mouth twitches. "So're you."

"Yeah." They just grin at each other, and then Niall gets back to work. "Send emails," he mutters. "And tell Elise you're sorry."

"Why?"

"D'you want me to answer that?"

"No."

"Alright, then." He puts it on the list anyway.

"I've got one," Louis says.

"You do?"

"Don't sound so surprised. Yeah, I want to get Bruce back from my mum's. Should never have shipped him off there, I'm a terrible parent."

"Aw," Niall says. "That's a good idea." Louis sees him type it as _visit jay_ , which, okay. It's not that he hasn't talked to his mum – certainly during El's exit, the slow death rattle that preceded it. A bit less after. He's texted her a few times to let her know he hasn't died, though not really lately. He hasn't precisely been honest with her.

The thought of talking through his present condition with her scares him, though, knowing it would scare her back, that she'd want him to come stay, probably, that it would be smothering, would make it all worse. Of everyone, he wants least of all for her to know how bad he's let it get, doesn't want her to wind up trying to fix it for him when it he should be the one taking responsibility for himself.

The needling voice in the back of his head pipes up, smug. _Isn't that the fucking problem?_ He winces.

Niall raises an eyebrow at him. "Y'alright?"

"Yeah." Louis rubs his eyes with his fists like a kid. "You don't miss much, do you?"

Niall smiles at that, inscrutable, and Louis shakes his head. "Weirdo," he mumbles, shoves at Niall's shoulder, tries not to think about it.

*

The groceries come that night. Niall forges Louis' signature for them while Louis hangs back, sitting guiltily on the stairs, not wanting to speak to a stranger. Niall makes stir fry, has Louis chop vegetables and cook rice, and after dinner they call Elise on Niall's phone to let her know Louis is alive and that no, he doesn't need anything at the moment, that no, a promotional appearance for a Rovers thing probably isn't a good idea this week but that yes, he'll be ready for NRJ and X-Factor next week, and yes, she can send the housekeeper around at the weekend, that the place could do with a bit of vacuuming.

Louis doesn't say sorry for blowing her off, even though he can tell Niall's waiting for him to do it, but it's a start.

*

**(thursday)**

Niall's getting out of the shower in the morning when Louis wakes up, earlier than usual. He comes out of the ensuite with a towel around his narrow waist and another around his shoulders, and Louis rolls over to blink at him, rubbing a bit of gunk from the corner of his eye.

"Morning," Niall says, drying his hair so it sticks up crazily before he flattens it again. "Hey, I've got a physio thing today. Just a check-up, won't be long."

"Kay," Louis yawns. He rolls over, a complete 360, onto the side of the bed Niall's taken over. The pillow smells like him – smells better than Louis', if he's honest. He should consider taking a shower today. Knows he probably won't, though, especially if Niall's not there to harp on him about it.

"You need anything from the outside world?"

"You'd know better than me, at this point," Louis mumbles. "What am I gonna do while you're gone?"

Niall laughs. "Good question. Do something productive so I can be proud of you when I get back."

"You're always proud of me."

"Yeah," Niall says, so absurdly fond and genuine about it that it makes Louis' chest hurt. He roots around in the overnight bag he brought until he finds the shorts and joggers and vest he wants and goes back into the bathroom with them, shedding his towels along the way. Louis catches a half-second's glimpse of his bare arse before he disappears, and it makes him frown.

The silence when Niall leaves is deafening. Louis stands in the foyer for a second, staring up at the high ceilings, listening to a tap dripping somewhere, all the little creaks and clunks of an empty house. He'd stopped hearing them while he was on his own before Niall showed up and filled the place with his presence, and now that he's gone they're all creeping back in.

He makes a bagel and a cup of tea and sits at the kitchen table looking at his phone, sitting menacingly blank on the table.

"Emails," he says to it, like maybe they'll get dealt with for him. The phone stays stubbornly still. Finally he picks it up like it's a live bomb, flinches at the glow of the screen turning on. He blows past texts and Twitter and makes a beeline for his inbox.

It takes him about twenty minutes, opening things, putting them in various labels to feel like he's doing something. He'll never have the unread count under a couple thousand, but it's good to keep the top chunk of them sorted. His mum's been sending him a lot of links, and there's production company stuff he actually needs to read and sign, digitally, so he goes and gets his computer and does it, every click a draining effort. When it's finished he sits there on the couch for a while, ears ringing, staring at the blank TV.

He's stoned when Niall comes back several hours later, but he shows him the evidence of productivity like a kid proving they worked on their science fair project. Niall laughs and gives him a hug and tells him it's good enough, more than, and Louis tries really hard to believe him.

*

**(friday)**

Louis is thinking about steps forward and back while they make spag bol and open a bottle of wine the next night. He's thinking about how Niall's good at distractions, and at getting Louis to do shit while he's there. But the looming prospect of actually gearing up for awards appearances and gigs next week is still a heavy, anxious weight. At the moment, Louis still feels like he can't deal with anything that isn't Niall.

But Niall's there, and he's easy, and so Louis lets himself laugh while they're eating, lets himself kick Niall's arse in FIFA and feel good about it, lets himself get wine-buzzed and heavy and slumped on the couch.

"What day is it?" he asks. Niall's onto Mario Kart now, zooming around in battle mode. Louis' just hidden himself up on top of one of the towers and is doing donuts, waiting until Niall finds him to move.

"Friday." Niall has his tongue between his teeth in concentration, his lips stained with Chianti. He's playing as Yoshi, like always. Louis is Waluigi.

"What would you be doing if you weren't here?" Louis asks, hearing it come out weak and whiny. He catapults off the edge of his block, landing hard on the ground and popping one of his balloons before zig-zagging sullenly away.

"What'd you do that for?" Niall asks, glancing at him. Louis shrugs. "Gonna come get you now," Niall mutters, hunched over his controller. He gets so ridiculous when he plays video games. There's a while of chasing each other in circles during which Niall gets distracted by the computer's Peach and Louis finds a new corner to hide in, and then Niall says, "I'd probably just be home. Might have gone out, I don't know. See what Willie and them was up to."

"Yeah."

Niall glances at him. "Don't go feeling like you're keeping me from anything, alright? I'm here 'cause I wanna be. End of story."

"I know," Louis says. "But still."

"Still nothing. When I wanna go, I'll go. Don't worry about it."

"I miss going out," Louis mumbles. Waluigi is stuck in a corner, and it's a miracle Niall hasn't caught up with him by now. Niall's face has a wine glow to it, though, which is probably why he's not doing a better job. Louis'll take what he can get.

"Do you?"

Louis laughs. "I mean – no. But I miss, like, wanting to? I guess that's it. I'm just… fuckin' tired all the time, man. I never want to do anything."

"We could go out," Niall says. "Ha! There you are." He's found the corner where Louis is just wiggling around uselessly, boxing him in.

"Fuck. Fine, I surrender."

"Nah, give you a fair shot."

"Are you serious?" Louis laughs as he rolls past Niall and down the corridor. "Mate, you are terrible at this game."

"I'm a team player. But we could go do something, if you want to. After this."

"After I'm done fucking your shit up," Louis corrects, wheeling around so that Yoshi runs right into him and loses his last balloon. "That was shameful, Nialler, honestly."

Niall's laughing anyway. He's the happiest loser Louis has ever known. "Gave up on that shit a long time ago," he says. "I can't use the buttons properly if I've had anything to drink. Not worth the trouble."

Louis sighs, looking at Waluigi standing triumphant in first place. "What d'you wanna do, then?"

Niall's peering out the window, and then he looks at something on his phone. "I've got an idea."

And that's how they wind up on the roof of Louis' house with a second bottle of wine and a bunch of pillows and blankets, staring up at a black sky blazing full of stars, the edges of the bare treetops like a fringe around it, suburban London's lights spread out below them. Louis had a ladder installed up from his bedroom balcony that he's hardly ever used, not wanting to wind up like Liam apologizing for being on the ledge of that building. _Pick your battles_ , he always thinks, though he's never been very good at that.

"Going out without going out," Niall tells him. He's propped on an elbow on the slant of the pitch, drinking from the bottle, and Louis breathes in lungfuls of cold night air, nestles deeper into the comforter he's lying on and pulls the one on top of them closer around himself.

"This is okay," he says. Niall laughs, fond, and it makes Louis smile a little, beneath the blanket where Niall won't be able to see.

"You know about stars and all that," he says eventually. "Anything good up there?"

Niall holds out the wine so Louis has to sit up to take it, shift the blanket back around his shoulders, scoot further up the roof. They're both in sweatshirts and joggers and socks, not enough layers but the cold feels good anyway, is helping clear Louis' head. He drinks while Niall looks around with his head tipped back, the flush on his cheeks matching the one on his pale throat.

"You, like, glow in the dark, mate," Louis says. He sticks the bottle between his thighs to hold it as he leans back, hands on the cold shingles.

"My luminous Irish complexion," Niall sighs. "I don't know, these're all out of order."

"What could you possibly mean by that?"

Niall waves him off, and Louis laughs. "That's the Big Dipper over there. Polaris. Little Dipper way up there. And that one's Orion."

"Those are the easy ones."

"Oh, well, you did ask. Like to see you try it."

Louis drinks some more wine, stares up for a long time. He should do this more often. He could have spent so much time by himself doing this, feeling so small that nothing even seems to matter anymore.

"S'crazy," he murmurs. "You know, I haven't seen the Milky Way in a while. Not since we were in France, d'you remember that? And we had that long overnight, like between cities, wherever it was."

"Yeah."

"And it was really clear and dark and all that, and we could see it?"

"I remember," Niall says. He's on his side now, looking at Louis while Louis looks up at the stars. "D'you miss touring?"

"I suppose," Louis says. "I miss having shit to do. Something every day."

"Yeah, but if we were on the road, you'd wish you were at home."

"Yeah, yeah. You got me all figured out."

Niall shrugs, pries the wine from Louis' hand and takes a swig.

"Do you?" Louis thinks to ask him after a while. "Miss it? Touring and that?"

"I love it," Niall says, tilting the wine from side to side. "I like being busy, you know. Seeing all those places. Just us and the crew. And performing. 'Course."

"Yeah."

"As in, yeah, you miss performing too?"

"Sure," Louis says, and then he actually thinks about it. "I do, I mean – I do." He tips his head back further, lets the cold creep under his chin. "I just get tired of it."

"You get tired 'cause you smoke too much."

"Hey, now."

"Just stating a fact, mate. You and Zayn, I mean, you, like, feed off each other."

"That's good." It hurts to hear him say it, so that Louis' protest comes out pitiful. "That's a good thing, us chilling out. Zayn chills me out."

"Too much, I think, sometimes," Niall murmurs. "And you him."

Louis narrows his eyes, and Niall holds his hands up in surrender. "Maybe I'm out of line. Just – it's part of why he didn't want to come, here, I mean. I think – like, I never said I thought you had a _problem_ , or anything."

"That's not a thing with pot."

"I know. But, it's the way you do it, right? Not _you_ you, but, like – the way anyone does anything." He's floundering a little, avoiding Louis' eye. "Doing it because you're bored, or because you're sad, or alone. Or, like, because you're with someone, but… you're trying to shut everything else out."

"You think me and Zayn do that?"

"I don't know."

"So that's a yes."

"Don't do that," Niall says softly, and it's arresting, that tone, makes Louis' indignation skid to a halt. "Putting words in my mouth like that. I just want you to – whatever you do, to do it 'cause it's good, 'cause it makes you feel good, you know? Makes you _like_ yourself. Not 'cause it just... shuts you down."

Louis is still digesting that when Niall adds, "Zayn thinks so, too. We all do."

"I know you do," he mutters. It's odd to be defeated on something so close to the skin. There's nothing he can really do about it.

He listens to the silence that sets in then, threaded with vague city background noise, the occasional passing car on the street below rolling past like a tide. Niall taps his fingers on the neck of the wine bottle.

"I like this, too, I'll have you know," Louis says. "Just hanging out with you like this. Just us. I don't know why we don't more often."

Niall looks up, and Louis glimpses the hurt on his face for a second before he manages to erase it. He feels then like he's seeing him, really seeing him, more than he has anyone in a long time. The way he saw Eleanor right before she left – like she was never more real to him than in that moment, even at their best. Now with Niall, everything else peeled back, all Louis' defenses worn down, it's the same kind of different. Like there's usually some distortion between them that's fallen away.

"Dunno," Niall says, shrugging, while Louis gapes at him with a tightness in his chest. "No reason. You've been kind of a hermit lately, if you hadn't noticed." He smiles, a bit bracing, drinks some more to cover how the moment went sour.

_I meant before_ , Louis thinks, but he doesn't say anything, has the feeling that line of questioning won't lead either of them anywhere good.

They're close but not touching, the way they're lying on the rough pitch of the roof, feet dug in under the same blanket and a big black sky. Louis can feel the space between their shoulders like it's more real than either of them, and half of him wants to close it and the other half wants to be as far away from this as possible. He's got a churning feeling inside, like he does when he thinks he's just fucked something up and doesn't know how to fix it or even know for sure if it really is fucked up, and so he stays in his head while Niall breathes steadily beside him, holding the wine upright on his prone chest so it's the highest point.

*

Going inside after that is jarring, their fingers stiff coming down the ladder and opening the balcony door. The warmth of the inside of the house presses insistently at their cold skin, both of them flushed.

"You want to go get Bruce tomorrow?" Niall asks, bunching the blankets into a pile near the closet, while Louis hunches his shoulders and rubs his hands, cups them together, blows.

"Could do." Louis sits on the edge of his bed and watches, heart sinking, as Niall picks his iPhone up from the nightstand and holds it out to him.

"Let your mum know we're coming, yeah?"

Louis just looks at the phone, up at Niall and back down. "I haven't really been on my phone in a while, mate. I mean, I did my emails, didn't look at the rest of that shit, though."

"You don't have to do anything else if you don't want. Just – quick text. In and out."

Louis takes it from him gingerly. Niall sits down next to him, their thighs pressed together, watches as Louis ignores reams of Twitter notifications and more unread emails and missed calls and all the rest of his texts and finds Jay. _Gonna pick up the pup tomorrow, let me know it's alright !_ Throws in a dog emoji and a SOON and a thumbs up, putting on a front. He hits send and puts the phone down and just looks at it. It still feels as though it's staring back.

"You wanna do anything else?" Niall asks gently.

"No."

Niall reaches around him anyway and grabs it. His body's still cold from being outside, and Louis has the urge to put his arm around him, warm him up, even though he's cold too. He doesn't feel it on himself as much as he does on Niall.

"What's your code?"

"All fives."

Niall rolls his eyes. "Very secure." He lets himself in. "I'm gonna just look at the missed calls so they stop showing up. Probably none you need." Louis sneaks a glance as he scrolls through. There's plenty of Niall's own name in there, some of Liam and Zayn and Harry, too. Harry's all at weird hours of the day from wherever he is in the world. His mum's called, but he's spoken to her. And Elise a bunch of times. _Sorry, Elise._ Some others from their team. A Rovers person. Even Julian.

Eleanor's down there, too, when Niall goes far enough back that it starts being from before Louis really abandoned his phone in earnest.

"D'you still want her in here?" Niall asks. "I can do the post-break-up exorcism your phone, no problem. What are friends for."

"No," Louis says, and his hands twitch a little, part of him wanting to take the phone from Niall and the other part feeling heavy and useless, like he's detached from himself. "I don't know. No, leave it."

"Alright," Niall says. "You don't have to now."

"She said we could be friends," Louis says. "She said... that if I wanted to do that, she would, too."

Niall puts the phone down and looks at him, frowning. "Do you wanna be?"

"I don't know," Louis says again, helpless. He nods at the books on the nightstand. "She took almost all her stuff, but." A lump rises in his throat then goes away and lets him talk again. "I miss her," he mumbles. "Kind of. I feel… really badly about how it ended. It wasn't, like, a huge fight, just. It felt like there was nothing really left. Like I'd sucked the life out of it."

"It's hard," Niall says. "It's hard anyway, to, like, keep up a relationship and do what we do at the same time. It's not all your fault."

"Kind of is," Louis says. He closes his eyes and his head spins behind them a bit. "She was tired of all the shit she got from the fans, know what I mean? Saying – it wasn't real, and – just all that hate." He swallows. "And I didn't know what I could do about it. I mean, there was nothing I could do, really, but… you're with someone that long, and you stop trying a bit. I should have tried more." He swallows. "I got tired of it. God, I'm a fucking arse."

"No you're not." A pause, far too long, and then Niall touches the small of his back with fingertips at first, flattens his palm and rubs a circle there. "Louis," he says. "I'm listening, mate. Let's talk about this."

Louis turns away like a sulking child, and Niall pulls his hand back. The beginnings of a wine headache are advancing behind Louis' eyes, and he needs Niall out of this room before the feeling of pushing him away gets any worse.

"I'm gonna go to sleep," he says.

"Alright." Niall stands up. Louis stays facing the headboard, folded in on himself, going catatonic with self-reproach.

He hears Niall stop in the doorway and finally looks around. Niall's got a weary smile on his face, his mouth still wine-stained, eyes heavy and sad. "You'll be alright, Lou," he says. "You're in it now, but you'll be fine. I promise."

"Alright, mate," Louis says, not holding his gaze. He remembers the first night, Niall saying _you're alright_ instead of _you'll be alright_ now, latches onto the difference as an affirmation of all the shit he's feeling.

Niall doesn't push it. "I'm down the hall if you need me," he murmurs, and shuts the door to a crack behind him. Louis listens to him shuffling down the hall and feels like he might be ill. The clawing thing inside him is staging a riot, trying to rip him open to escape. There is nothing, in this moment, that Louis likes about himself.

His phone is still sitting on the bed, and he picks it up, chasing feeling worse about himself on instinct. Clicks through to his texts. Zayn's at the top, after his mum. A couple of weeks where Louis hasn't said more than a few words, and every couple of days, just a check-in from Zayn: _How's your day mate_ or _Alright lou ?_ Patient, keeping some space. Louis loves that about Zayn, that he never pushes it. He tries not to think about what Niall had said about the two of them.

He works up the will just to text him _hey_ , waits a few minutes scrolling through other unread messages – Liam's liveblogged whole days with no response from Louis, and Harry keeps sending him dumb pictures of food he's eating and random shit he sees on the street – but Zayn doesn't text back. Louis wonders what he's doing instead, feels the distance, the abandonment of it tight in his skin. He plugs the phone back in, leaves it on silent, flips it face down.

Niall's running the tap in the bathroom down the hall. Louis wonders if he's thought of leaving for the night and coming back in the morning, or not coming back at all.

He's tired but not sleepy, like fucking always, and he wants to smoke but he's left all his shit downstairs and he's too wine-lazy and sad to drag himself to it. So he reaches for Eleanor's book and finds the page she'd written on, the bit about it not being enough just to exist.

The essay itself is sort of a tough read – even the book feels weird to hold in his hands. He skims it, skipping between the sentences Eleanor underlined, pausing on other bits that catch his eye.

_To do without self-respect is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable home movie that documents one’s failings, both real and imagined,_ it says: _There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face._

It strikes a chord in him with almost intolerable precision. He wonders if El left it on purpose, feels a dull flare of anger that she would, then another at himself for being angry, assuming the worst in other people.

_People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk._ She circled it, and he can't help but make the whole thing about them. Remembers writing Strong and thinking of her then, what he told Julian about scaring someone off having to tell them you need them. How he and El never really vaulted that particular hurdle – how he never tried all the way. Protected himself and thought he was protecting them by doing it, and it made her leave.

His mind ticks to Niall, silent down the hall. He thinks of pulling back when Niall was reaching out earlier, when he could have laid it all out there, asked Niall to forgive him for being such a piece of shit, and he didn't do it.

It ends like this: _To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others: there lies the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home._ He flinches away from the sternness of it.

He can't help but loop back to an earlier line as he sits there trying to let it process, one that said it's impossible to go on thinking your own self-loathing matters in a cold shower. It's been several days since Louis had a shower and the idea sounds kind of appealing, especially with his head pounding from the wine the way it is. The paracetamol is in the bathroom, too, so he slips out of bed, stepping out of his clothes along the way.

In the harsh light of the vanity, he swallows a couple painkillers and takes stock of his appearance: purple circles beneath his eyes, his hair in need of a trim, in greasy strings across his forehead. A spot on his jaw, visible through the unruly stubble growing there and on his upper lip. He stares at himself like he's looking at a ghost, sweeps his eyes across the familiar script on his sternum: _It is what it is._

He steps into the tub dry and turns on the shower cold, so it shocks him, makes him curl away when it hits his skin. But he grits his teeth through it, moves into the spray a fraction at a time, and finally he's soaked and shivering, overlong hair dripping down his back.

He washes like that, scrubs his skin raw, shampoos his hair twice, until he feels almost painfully lucid -- not better or worse but like the cold has stripped away all the filters and shades that stood between him and the reality of his situation. That there really is no situation. That he got himself here, and could probably get himself out if he'd just nut up and do it.

He sinks down the tile wall until he's sitting against the edge of the tub, drawing his slick knees up to his chest, feeling paper-thin and tiny. The water pressure is turned up high and the steady cold pounding of it only covers half of him now, leaving him to stare at it, blinking the sting of stray droplets from his eyes. A shiver runs through him, and another, and he clenches his hands into fists so tight that his nails bite into his palms.

The tears come without warning, hot on his cheeks, rising up unstoppably from some unknown well within him. He chokes on the lump in his throat, shocked after every time he'd felt like crying and couldn't in the past few days, that this is when it gets him, when he's not supposed to be able to keep being like this. It takes him a moment to lock onto what's really causing it: that he's mourning having spent so much time feeling shitty. That he let it – that _he_ drove Eleanor away with this pointless bullshit, made it so that no one except for Niall even wanted to come near him. Has been an arsehole even to him. He's been letting himself go to waste for nothing.

He sobs out loud, head dropping forward so he's almost in a ball, cries loud and messy like he's letting poison blurt out of a wound. There's snot and spit on his lips and he can't catch his breath, gulping and gasping with it, hands clenching uselessly, digging his nails into his arms and his thighs to try and get a grip on himself.

Through the ringing in his ears he registers a soft knock on the door.

"Lou? Y'alright in there?"

"Yeah," Louis chokes out, "fine," but it's glaringly obvious he's crying and he knows it and apparently Niall does too. Louis shivers violently as the door opens and the air changes, draws a wracking breath that feels like it might crack his rigid chest, his ribcage.

Niall's voice is in the room now when he asks, confused, "Is that cold?" He must be noticing there's no steam. Louis tries to swallow, sticks his face under the spray of the shower, but he can't stop crying, his whole body shaking. "Lou–? I'm just – can you answer me?"

But Louis can't get the words out, shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut. He hears the clink of the shower curtain's rings being drawn back and can't even manage to feel shame at being found like this, naked in the bathtub, wet and shivering, eyes swollen and lips cracked from crying.

"Jesus," Niall says. He touches the stream of water with fingertips, flinching at the cold, then reaches over and turns it off. The room goes abruptly quiet, and Niall grabs a towel off the back of the door. "Hey, hey, Louis," he murmurs, dropping into a crouch on the bathmat so he's on Louis' eye level. He glances Louis over: his skin tight and pink with cold, how red his eyes probably are. "What's going on, eh?"

"Read about it," Louis says, or tries to say – his teeth are actually chattering, and these little sobs are still catching in his throat no matter how hard he tries to stop them. "El's book."

"Alright," Niall breathes. "C'mon, come on out," he says, holding the towel out, helping Louis up off the floor. Louis steps into it, clutching Niall's hand with wrinkled fingers, weak-kneed and shaking. "Easy now," Niall says. "There you go." Louis wraps the towel around himself like a poncho, stands there hiccoughing, dripping a puddle onto the floor.

"The book said to freeze yourself to death in the shower?" Niall asks, and it makes a smile twitch across Louis' mouth. Niall finds a terry robe in the laundry basket in the corner, offers it out to Louis. "Here, mate," he says, helps him into that, too.

Louis leans into him when it's on, presses his wet face against Niall's shoulder and wraps his arms around him, squeezes his eyes shut. There's another wave of it coming, and he sinks to the floor protectively before it hits, pulling Niall with him.

They sit there with their knees bent together, Niall holding onto him, clearly not knowing what to say while Louis cries the last of it out into his neck. The tears more like sighs now, not as harsh or messy but still gutting. Niall's got a hand in his wet hair, fingers carding gently.

He knows when he's hit the bottom of the well, but stays holding onto Niall anyway, letting his breathing even out. He feels exhausted, throat raw, face puffy.

"Sorry," is the first thing he says, and he gives Niall a squeeze before he pulls back, wiping his face with the back of his hand and laughing a little. "Oh, your shirt." His voice cracks.

Niall glances at the face-print on his shoulder. "It'll wash out," he says, smiling bracingly. "D'you wanna talk about it?"

Louis takes a deep breath, limbs tingling with the fresh oxygen. "I think it's good," he says. "Just. What do you call it."

"Catharsis," Niall says, easily.

"Yeah." Some small buried part of Louis is laughing that Niall knew the word just like that, a little stirring in the depths of this raw numbness.

"Just thinking, you know. How I brought this all on."

"You didn't–"

"No, I did," Louis says, "but… it's alright. I mean, it's not, but – I've gotta deal with it, you know?" He holds Niall's gaze, shivers under it but doesn't look away. " I wanna... be better. Next time. I don't want to lose anyone else like her."

Niall shivers a little, too, a slight roll of his shoulders that Louis doesn't really understand. He nods, gives an encouraging smile, and Louis isn't sure if he gets it but that's okay. That's new, not feeling like shit that he can't make people understand where his head is at. Knowing that what matters most is that he understand it himself, first – that the rest will follow.

It's almost tender, the way Niall puts him to bed, and Louis is out nearly the moment his head hits the pillow. He's conscious just long enough to notice Niall's not retreating back down the hall, but slipping in beside him, not saying a word. Sleep takes him before he can really process it.

*

**(saturday)**

It doesn't get better straight away, of course. Louis is emotionally hung over through the morning, goes back to sleep half a dozen times. He stumbles into the bathroom when he finally gets up and makes a soft noise of disapproval at the swollen bags under his eyes. There's a tub of eye cream in the cabinet, courtesy of Lou, so he takes it downstairs and sticks it in the fridge and leaves it while he makes tea. Gemma taught him that trick, years ago. It's been a long time since he's thought to do it.

Niall's on the phone in the living room, talking indistinctly. He gets off quick when Louis comes in with the eye cream in one hand and a mug in the other.

"Hey," he says, standing, but Louis waves him off.

"Quit it, I'm not dying." He sits down on the couch, draws his knees up cross-legged. "Who was that?"

"Bressie," Niall says. "He had some recommendations for therapists."

Louis ignores the uncomfortable spike he feels at that, daubs the cold cream on the puffiness beneath his eyes and sighs with relief.

"Only if you want," Niall goes on, "but it seems like – I mean, if you're serious about, like – I'm not gonna be much help to you." He frowns. "Only so much I can do."

"I know," Louis mutters, staring at his hands.

"And I really wanna see you well, Lou. And not just 'cause we've got stuff to do next week." He laughs. "Just 'cause… you're my mate, and I do, y'know?"

"I know," Louis says again, and he tries for a smile, holds Niall's gaze for a moment. There's a flash of the night before, Louis naked, trembling, all but collapsing into Niall's arms. He shivers, remembering – can't believe that Niall's the same one who's sitting here next to him on the couch like nothing's weird. Only Niall could go through that with him and not make it a thing the next day.

"I'll go," he says. "Send Elise the names and have her set something up."

Niall's shoulders drop a little in relief, and he sets about tapping out an email straight away.

"Hang on." Louis puts a hand out to stop him, touching his fingers on top of his phone screen. "I'll do it. For Christ's sake." And he tries to ignore Niall's wondering smile as he goes and gets his computer, deals with it by his goddamn self.

*

They go and get Bruce that evening, and Louis nearly starts to cry again when he sees his mum. How she just knows. "Hi, love," she says, touching his face, pulling him into a hug in the front hall of the house. "How've you been? It's been ages."

"I know," he says, muffled into her neck. "I'm sorry I haven't been calling."

"Needed a bit of time," she says, like she's asking, nodding earnestly. "Well, your dog's outside. Come in, Niall, it's so good to see you."

"Hiya, Jay," he says. She hugs him too and keeps her arm around Louis as they walk into the house.

"Have you talked to her?" she asks him quietly, once Niall's been waylaid by Lottie in the kitchen and it's just him and his mum in the dining room by the back door.

"Nah," he says. Nothing's changed in this house, as he looks around, from the last time he was here. It helps with the uneasy, floating feeling of being outside his own place for the first time in ages. "Probably not going to, for a while, anyway."

"I know, sweetheart," she says. "Have you been talking to Niall about it much?"

"Some," he says. "He's – been really good, I mean, he's been staying with me. Helping me get my shit together a bit. I mean – just, helping. Sorry."

She laughs. "Are you okay, then?" He nods, trying for a bracing smile, but she sees right through him, pulls him into a hug again. "My brave boy. I know it's hard."

"Yeah," he mumbles. "I'm – uh, gonna talk to someone, actually." His heart races as he says it, like it's the biggest fucking secret. She pulls back.

"Someone who?"

"Like… a therapist. I mean, not just about El. Like, about… me. About everything. Just… coping better, you know?"

"Of course I do." There are tears in her eyes, but she blinks them back. "Baby, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to worry.”

"I've been your mum for quite a long time, Lou," she says. "I can handle it. Anything."

"Yeah." He smiles. "I know." Movement out the window catches his eye, and there's Bruce's big curly head peeking over the sill. "Hey, buddy!" He opens the door and drops down so Bruce can bowl him over, wagging frantically, climbing into Louis' lap like he's a quarter his actual size. He grabs a handful of curly straw-colored fur, sticks his nose in by Bruce's collar and breathes in the thick dog smell of him, scratches his ears. "I know, I know," he says. "I missed you too. I did."

"Aw, look at that," comes Lottie's voice from behind him. She's standing there with Niall, her phone out, probably Instagramming. Louis gives her camera a sheepish, goofy smile from his pile of dog on the floor, hears the shutter click, and thinks, _Well, there's that_. Niall is watching, too, and they grin at each other for a moment, and Louis feels full of warmth all the way through him, from his heart to the very inside of his skin, like he's been frozen and now he's thawing.

They stay for dinner, which Niall spends most of pulling faces at the baby twins and making all the rest of the Tomlinson kids, Louis included, laugh into their potatoes. He feels lighter than he has in weeks in the car on the way home, Niall driving, Bruce pacing around excitedly in the backseat.

Louis' phone startles him when it rings in his pocket. He turns down Charlie Sloth on R1 blasting through Niall's stereo. "Did you set my phone to ring?"

"Yeah." Niall has the decency to look a little chagrined about it. "I figured Elise might call."

"She is." He answers it. "Hello?"

"Hi, love, how's your week?"

"Good," he says, and then, taken by some Jay-induced instinct, he says it before she can go on: "Hey, Elise, I'm sorry I've been such a prick."

"Aw, you haven't, Lou–"

"No, I have," he says. "I'm apologizing, just take it." In the driver's seat, Niall raises an eyebrow, and Louis sighs. "No, I should have been calling you back and stuff. It's been a weird time, and I haven't been staying on top of… anything, really. I know it makes your life harder. Don't mean to take it out on you."

She's quiet for a moment, then says, in her bird-like little voice, "Thanks, Louis, I appreciate that. It's good to have you back."

"Yeah." He laughs. "Good to be back." Niall glances at him again, gives him a questioning thumbs up, and Louis nods. This, he supposes, is what progress looks like.

"Well – so, that list. Of therapists," she says. "I've made you an appointment with the one that looked best to me. Her name's Teresa and it's Tuesday, if you can manage it."

"Shit," he says. "Yeah, um." He blinks – it's really happening. "Fine. Send me the details."

"You want a car, love, or–?"

"Nah, I can drive myself."

"Alright, Lou. Oh, you've been sent some football kit from Los Angeles, the team that just won their championship."

"The Galaxy," he laughs. "Yeah. Cool."

"So I'll drop it 'round tomorrow, okay? Let me know if you need anything else."

"Will do. Thanks, love." He hangs up and looks at Niall, who's grinning at him.

"That was rather normal," he says.

"Exceptionally so," Niall agrees. He gives Louis a fist-bump. "Told you it wasn't so bad."

"Guess not." There's a tiredness rising in him at the thought of going back to this kind of shit on a daily basis, but he reaches back and pets Bruce's big soft head and feels a little better.

Bruce runs in and does a lap around the foyer and the kitchen with Niall on his heels when they get back, and Louis stands and watches as Niall goes straight for refilling the food and water bowls in the corner, murmuring while Bruce wags and noses at his knees.

"I can do all his chores," Louis says, bemused.

"Nah, I don't mind." Niall plops next to Bruce on the floor, skritches his neck. "We don't mind, do we? Do we, Brucie?" Bruce pants happily, licks Niall's cheek. Niall licks him back, then looks up at Louis.

And Louis is thinking how nice it is to see them like this, to have Niall here like this. It's a new feeling, catching sudden and big and blooming in his chest, just as Niall says, "So, I might go."

"What?"

"Been almost a week," he says, shrugging like it's nothing, even though his eyes are stuck on Louis' face. "And you seem good. Better, a lot better. I dunno, I figured I might… let you get back to it."

"Oh," Louis says. Silence falls like a weird fog over the room, with Bruce at Niall's side, looking expectantly between the two of them. "Yeah, I know you must have shit to do. Kept you more than long enough, haven't I."

"I don't, really." Niall laughs ruefully. "I'd stay as long as you wanted." And there's suddenly no trace of humor as he levels his eyes at Louis, and Louis feels a little thrill through his heart. He could ask him to stay. After everything, he doesn't know how to do it. Doesn't even know what it would mean.

"I– yeah, no. I'll be good," he says. "Go on. I'll see you – um – when is it?"

"We fly out for France on Saturday." Niall smiles. "Got it figured out, eh?"

"Yes," Louis mumbles, addressing himself to Bruce. "I will. Getting my life back together, if you haven't noticed."

"Yeah, I know." Niall stand up and fidgets for another long moment, and then he bounces forward, toward the stairs. Louis watches him go, listening to the creaks of him gathering his stuff up in the bedrooms, feeling his own heartbeat, edgy in his chest. It's a different kind of anxious than he's been lately.

Bruce trots over and pushes his nose up under Louis' hand until he pets him, thumps his side. "I know," he murmurs.

Niall comes back down with his bag and pulls Louis into a hug before either of them can say anything, holds onto him for a long time, until Bruce whines, pushes his face between their knees and makes them both laugh and break apart.

"Thanks," Louis says quietly, looking at Niall, still close with the dog between them. "I don't know what I would've done, if... yeah."

"Happy to do it, Lou," Niall says. "You need me, you just call. Anytime. I'll be here."

"Thanks, mate," he says. And he's emotional, realizes it too late, so his mouth twists a little as he adds, "Love you."

"Love you too," Niall says. His cheeks are pink, and he turns away too quick. "Thanks for the hospitality! See you soon!" And then he's out the door.

Louis sits on the floor right where he's standing and hugs Bruce around the middle, presses his face into his side, draws in a shaky breath and lets it out slow.

*

**(sunday)**

He's never been more grateful for Bruce than when he wakes up the next morning and the dog is curled in the angle of his knees, filling in the space of another body atop the sheets. Louis listens to the empty house for a while, staring at the ceiling. It feels like a Monday from back when he was in school – tired before it even begins.

He puts his hand out to feel Bruce's side rise and fall with his baleful breathing, his eyes big, blinking slow up at Louis. Louis wonders if he's wondering where Eleanor is, or if he's gotten over that in the time he spent at his mum's place. Dogs probably don't feel about breakups the way people do. But he thinks Bruce would.

"Mummy and Daddy still love each other very much," he tells him. "We just can't live together anymore." It feels true enough. He drags himself into the shower, turns up the heat and fills the place with steam.

Zayn's replied to his veiled SOS from the other night, finally, so he texts with him for a while. It's really nice not to feel ostracized, to feel Zayn just rolling with it, albeit from a distance. They talk a bit about Niall, but there Louis has trouble providing details, somehow. It all feels rather private. Like it was just theirs.

Elise comes by with the Galaxy stuff after that and they have a cup of tea and look at his schedule, talk about tour. There's been some non-essential meetings he's missed because no one felt like dealing with asking him to show up. He tells her he's sorry for making her job so difficult, again, and she waves him off but he can tell it makes her happy.

"Are you writing much?" she asks. "Songs? You and Liam are going to L.A. next month, remember."

"Yeah," he says. The annual trip, now. "I haven't been much, though."

"Hang on a minute." She goes into the hallway, and when he follows her a moment later she's rooting around in her bag.

"I know you've got notebooks," she says, and she pulls out a slim leather Moleskine, or something like it, black cover, good cream-colored paper inside. "But sometimes I find it's nice to have something separate for times like this."

He takes it from her. It's soft, the cover bendy like he likes, obviously now much nicer than a Moleskine. His initials are embossed in the lower right corner.

"Wow, Elise," he says, running his hands along its spine. The corners feel good in the center of his palm. "Times like what?" he asks, though he thinks he knows.

"Just what you're going through," she says. "One of those times where you look back and you say, you know – it's got bookends. You went through this tough time, and then it ended. It's like a chapter. It should have its own notebook." She smiles at him, that look she gets when she's not sure if she's overstepping, like there's really such a thing from part of their everyday team. She hefts the strap of her purse onto one shoulder and frees a short lock of blonde hair from beneath it, looking at him.

He opens the notebook to see if it's lined, and sees she's written in the inside cover: _L – work hard and be kind! December 2014_. She's pink-cheeked when he looks up at her.

"Something my mum used to say to me," she says. It's a Harry thing, too, Louis remembers, a mantra that's never far from any of them but that he doesn't think about very often. Not as often as he should. "I hope you get some use out of it. The notebook, I mean. Any kind of use."

"I will," he says. "I'll write you a song, won't I?" She shakes her head happily and stands on tip-toe to kiss him on the cheek. It's so nice to have her there, dependable, understanding, prodding gently. He thinks she's probably a good influence. He's never realized how grateful he is for her.

He spends the rest of the day listening to old records with Bruce on the couch, his computer Bluetoothing to the speaker system, the notebook on his lap. It's weird to write without Liam and Julian there. He hasn't tried to in a long time.

He's thinking about songs the way Niall does, where they don't always have to be about the girl, wondering if he could write something like that.

_been on my own,_ he writes, slow,  
_working me out,_  
_thinking of you,_

He stops short there, looking at the shape of the letters. He doesn't love it but he's glad to have broken in the notebook anyhow, the satisfaction of giving in to whatever's crawling around in his head and putting it on a page with a favorite pen.

He looks out the window for a while after that, wishing Niall were there to figure out the melody.

*

**(tuesday)**

The therapist is a 20-minute drive, and he takes his least conspicuous, most tinted car for it, keeps his eyes on the rearview and jiggles his thumb against the steering wheel while he drives. He'd nearly brought Bruce, felt awful leaving him behind again so soon, but he's a good dog, probably won't tear the house up while Louis is away. Louis thinks he himself might when he gets home from this shit, but that's a different issue.

He pulls his beanie down further over his ears and knocks on the front door of her townhouse, glancing around. She opens it in five seconds, says, "Louis, hi, come in," locks it right behind him, all of which makes him feel safe in a way that's stupid, way too self-important. "I'm Teresa," she says, shaking his hand.

"Pleased to meet you," he says, then, stupidly, "Louis." She smiles, and she's like his mum in 15 years. He wonders if that's why Elise had picked her. Crows' feet by her eyes, her hair shot with grey and pulled back into a messy arrangement at the back of her head. She's in a cheery blue cardigan and dark jeans, and she makes a lot of eye contact, the kind that gets a response without being demanding.

Her home office isn't all the way what he was expecting, but it comes close: tasteful, muted artwork, lamps and warm tones, a beige couch against one wall and and an armchair in the facing corner.

"Tea?" she asks.

"Cheers," he says. She leaves him there staring around and comes back in a couple of minutes with a mug of hot water and a box of tea bags, then sits in her chair with a folio open on her lap, crosses her ankles and takes him in while he fiddles with it all on the couch.

"So," she says. "What can I do for you, Louis?"

He takes a scalding sip of tea, sat stiffly on the edge of the couch. "Did Elise tell you…?"

"She said a bit," Teresa says. "I thought it might be good to ask you, though."

"Well, I – I don't know," he says. "I've been feeling… a bit low lately. Not really, um, interested in doing much. Bit sick of the day to day, you know."

She nods. "So, tell me about the day to day."

"What?"

"What do you do? I mean, for a living, for starters."

He laughs, and then quickly shuts up when she remains politely attentive, waiting. "Oh, um, I'm in a band. One Direction." He knows she must know, that she's just going through the motions with him to make him feel at ease, and he can't tell if he likes it or not.

"And is that the day to day you're sick of?"

He hesitates. "No," he says, "but – yes, at the same time. I don't know." Crosses his ankle over his knee, fidgets with the frayed hem of his jeans. "I'm a bit bored by it, and I've always been a bit overwhelmed by it… and I broke up with my girlfriend because of it, and I don't know what I'm going to do when it ends." His voice tails off toward the end of it, a downhill slope.

She leans forward a little, twirls her pen between two fingers. She hasn't written anything on her notepad yet, which makes him feel marginally better.

"A lot to parse out in there," she says softly. "Let's take it in pieces, alright?"

She has him go through every feeling, breaking it into its component parts. When she finds a part that she thinks is holding him back from understanding the others, she tells him to try to put it aside, to see how the other bits feel without it, and it's like peeling back layers of a thing whose center he knows exists but has never seen. It's trancelike when he lets himself slip into it, first because it's impossible to keep talking if he doesn't disassociate, and then because he's so deep he can't feel the surface anymore, drifting like a ghost into forgotten corners of his own brain where all the worst shit's stayed boxed up.

He tells her about the past week with Niall, about Eleanor, and she asks if he's always had these feelings of inadequacy, asks him to chunk them out for her. He talks about his voice, remembers X-Factor and having so much to prove and not getting a chance to do it, and they go over their first hour and into a second and she hasn't even said much and he can't stop fucking talking.

"Do you feel like you pay more attention to negative feedback than positive?" she asks. He frowns.

"Think everyone does, don't they?"

She smiles. "What makes you do it?"

He thinks about it for long enough that the silence starts to feel thick.

"I've heard a lot of it," he says cautiously.

"But a lot of good things, too."

"Yeah." He frowns. "But I guess you hear enough of the bad shit and you start to believe it," he says, voice going small.

And he really likes that she's not pitying, doesn't let him have more than just the time he needs to process what he's saying before pushing him further into it. "So the part of you that thinks it's true," she says, "how do you feel about that?"

"I hate it," he says, "I feel like – it drags me down." He bites his lip.

"Can you set that feeling aside for me?"

"Yeah." He shuts his eyes, takes time to focus on it, imagining he's physically moving a labeled bin to a different shelf and then coming back to center.

"What else is there? Is there some reason you hang onto it?"

"I guess… I feel like, if I'm already – if all the bad shit is true, then… then I can't disappoint anyone, 'cause I already am a disappointment," he says, and there's a lump in his throat, ridiculously. He remembers talking with Niall about this on the floor of the laundry room, what feels like ages ago. The better he understands it, the more pathetic he feels.

"I can tell that's affecting you," she says.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because it's so fucking stupid," he says, voice tight. "How am I ever gonna do anything, if that's what I'm doing? Just – sitting here feeling like it's not even worth it to try, because I'm already a fuck-up, and I can't change it?"

She smiles. "You're angry," she says. "That's good."

"It is?"

"You should be. That part that feels like a disappointment – it's made itself this safe space, and then it's turned on you," she says. "You feel like you've betrayed yourself."

"Yeah," he whispers.

"Louis, that's good," she says again, leaning forward. "Feeling like that means you know that you deserve better. And you do, love. You deserve to be happy. You haven't done anything not to deserve that."

He can't reply, can't look at her. She doesn't know him; how can she say after a couple of hours that he deserves anything at all?

He thinks about the self-respect essay: _in order to remember it_ , it said, _one must have known it._ Must have known happiness and love and self-love and the desire for these things, the willingness to fail, to try again. Niall had felt like he deserved all that goodness, in spite of everything. That all this was salvageable. Between him and Teresa, maybe there's some truth.

"Thanks," he murmurs.

"Sure," she says, smiling big. "Do you think this helped some? You want to come in again?"

"Yeah," he says, "I think… yeah, I do."

"You sound surprised," she laughs, and it makes him grin in spite of himself.

"I am, sort of," he says. "Elise has my schedule. It's a bit hectic–"

"I can imagine."

"–but she can help you figure it out."

"Alright." She stands, scribbles something on the back of a business card and hands it to him. "You call me anytime you want, and if it's a weird time of day, text ahead and I'll call you back. I want you to think about this stuff we're talking about. If you need to break anything down or just need to vent," and she smiles when this makes him smile, "I'm here."

"I will," he says, reeling a bit – this was so unlike anything he'd expected. "I'll see you soon."

"Ta, love. Safe travels."

"Oh, yeah," he says. "I'm supposed to go to France on Saturday. Fuck, I'd forgot again."

"Are you looking forward to it?"

"Not really," he says, before he even knows it's going to come out of his mouth. "I haven't been to any – anything in a little while. I mean, we've been on break, but… I skipped a couple of things. Like one thing. I don't know. Just not been up for loads of people."

"Is it the only thing you've got coming up?"

"No," he says, and his smile gives him away. "We're playing X-Factor with Ronnie Wood on Sunday. I can't fucking believe it."

"Wow," she says. "Now you I can cope with, but that's got me a bit starstruck. You must be so excited."

"I am," he says. "Been looking forward to it for ages."

"That's good," she says, touching his shoulder. "Be good to yourself this week, alright? What sort of thing do you do to take care of yourself?"

"How d'you mean?"

"Like self-care. When you're stressed, how do you take the edge off that and calm down a bit? Level out?"

_Smoke weed_ , he thinks, but to her he just shrugs. "I sleep a lot," he says. "Talk to people, I guess. Talk to my dog. Play FIFA."

"Alright," she says. "Well, we'll work on those. Have fun out there. Can't wait to hear about it."

They say goodbye and he has an impulse to hug her, but he doesn't, just steps outside onto her front step in the bright clear cold, no paps waiting for him. He feels light and heavy at the same time as he walks to his car.

*

He's toking up in bed that night when he gets a tickle in his throat, and it builds and builds until he's stopped smoking half an hour ago and he's still hacking away like he's dying. Bruce comes trotting in, concerned, jumping on the bed. He puts his head in Louis' lap but flinches back when Louis doubles over, coughing desperately against the itch in his lungs.

"Fuck," he rasps. "Dammit, Brucie." The thought's already in his head, that he won't be able to go to France if he's sick, and he's disgusted with himself how fast he's clinging to it. There's a sinking relief in having an excuse not to have to go out in public.

He thinks of texting Niall, then looks at Bruce, has a silent, one-sided conversation with him that ends in Bruce snuffling happily and crawling up the bed to roll over into Louis' side. Louis chugs half the glass of water on the nightstand and hits the light, waits to see how it is in the morning.

*

**(thursday)**

It only gets worse the longer he puts off deciding to just decide he's too sick to perform. He spends another night coughing, and two days before they've got to leave wakes up pale as death with a stuffy nose and a pounding head. Bruce is following him around, cocking his head side to side like he wishes he knew how to help.

"Niall," he croaks into the phone once he's secure on the couch in a blanket cocoon with two cups of tea and his box of Kleenex. "I'm sick, mate."

"Boo, you whore," Niall says, then laughs at himself, then stops abruptly. Louis can picture him schooling his features, and it makes him smile weakly. "What've you got? You _sound_ sick."

"Oh, glad you believe me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Niall says. "Give me the symptoms, doc."

"Been coughing up a lung all week. My nose is all stuffed up. I can't hear. Head's killing me. Rest of me's killing me. I think I'm dying."

"Sounds like it. Bet it's the consumption."

"The what?"

"You know, like tuberculosis."

"Like Nicole Kidman had in Moulin Rouge?"

Niall cackles. "Yeah, that's it."

Louis grins, then coughs for a while and finally comes back, eyes watering. "Hey," he gets out.

"Christ, that sounds awful. You gonna make it to France?"

"I don't know," Louis says, and he feels pathetic already. "I feel like shit, mate."

"Yeah. Maybe you should skip it. Gotta have you for Sunday," he says. "You'll make it to Sunday, right?"

"Yeah," Louis says. "Fuck, I hope so. I'd better."

A pause in which Louis blows his nose. "I'm glad to hear it, though," Niall says. "That you want to come out."

"Of course I do, it's Ronnie fucking Wood."

"I know." He can hear Niall's grin. "Fuckin' right it is."

"Fuckin' right," Louis says, voice hitching, and he coughs. "Ugh, I guess I'd better stop talking."

"Yeah," Niall says, but he doesn't move in the direction of saying goodbye. "You wanna know how my week's been?" he asks after a while, and Louis feels a little flood of warmth.

"Go," he grunts, trying to make as little sound as possible.

So Niall just talks at him for another couple of minutes that turns into fifteen, more, enough so Louis stops noticing that time is passing. He contributes a creaky little noise resembling laughter or assent every so often, sometimes says a few words to keep Niall going. It feels like Niall is having fun with it, invested, not just prattling on half-distracted to humor pathetic lonely Louis.

"Anyway, that's what Eoghan's been doing," he says at the end. They've meandered through a hundred new topics and Louis has hardly had to say a word. "He's a fucking madman, that one. Bless him."

Louis laughs, tries to keep it soundless, and Niall says, "Yeah, I know."

Another warm patch of silence.

"This was fun," Louis stage-whispers.

"I'll talk your ear off any day of the week, mate."

Louis can hear Niall's smile in his voice. "Kay," he murmurs.

He doesn't know where Niall even is, what he's doing. Barely knows what time it is. He remembers asking him back when he was staying over, _What would you be doing right now if you weren't here?_ And it's hard not to know.

Louis thinks about asking so that he can feel worse about being stuck at home, and then steps outside of that, thinks about asking just because he wants to know. Because he cares what Niall is up to, just for the sake of it.

"What are you doing?" he asks. Easy.

"Shopping for new driving gloves," Niall says, and Louis bursts out laughing.

"Of course you are," he says, and then he coughs. "Fuck me," he says emphatically. And though it's the last thing he wants: "I should let you go."

"Alright, mate, heal fast," Niall says. "See you Sunday, promise? Won't go on without you."

“I promise.”

“Good. Love you.”

“Love you too, Nialler.”

He doesn't know what to do with himself when they hang up. His first instinct, ridiculously, is to text Niall. As he's weighing whether to do it, his phone buzzes in his hand: three pictures in quick succession of different gloves Niall's trying on. _what ya think???_ he's asked. A slick black and green pair, then white leather, then floral purple ones that are hilariously small on Niall, must be from the women's section. Louis snorts. _Definitely the third one_ he texts. _Or give those to Harry._

_hahahhaa,_ Niall replies. _might be too matchy matchy for his wardrobe_

_Do your hair purple again and they'll be perfect for you !_

Niall sends him all the girly makeover emoji, a bunch of flowers and hearts and blushing smiley faces, followed by the golf club and a thumbs up. Louis laughs quietly into the silence of his empty house, and he imagines that wherever Niall is he's laughing too.

He can't stop thinking about that, despite the stupid content of the conversation. Feels like the space between the two of them went soft so slowly he barely noticed it, even though Niall was only here for a week and it's barely been a week since then, and Louis just hasn't stopped thinking about him. About always wanting to ask him to stay and not knowing how to do it.

It makes him shiver, physically. He lets himself think for one long moment about if Niall was still coming back here, if this was them texting on Niall's way home. Imagines hugging him hello at the door.

He gets a flash of kissing him, and his chest clenches.

“Bruce,” he rasps out reflexively. That thought cannot happen. He needs to distract himself before it takes root, needs something else to think about that's not the past two weeks – not Niall taking care of him in sickness and in health, Niall's presence and his absence and the way he fills all the empty space inside of Louis, how he makes him better, makes him want to be better, makes him want. Something that's not all the times Louis could have kissed him, when all of a sudden it's as though he wanted to without even knowing.

He remembers Niall's fingers in his hair all those times, all those gentle touches, and shivers with it. Niall would go so soft for him -- always does, no matter what they're doing -- would let Louis take the lead or would do it himself if Louis wanted. He can picture them, so fucking clearly: a lazy snog on the couch or in the kitchen, easy, impromptu, the way Louis likes best. Can hear Niall's laugh in his head, and he wishes so badly that he was here. 

Bruce brings him a chew toy and Louis spends a while throwing it for him from the sofa, manically turning the whole thing over in his mind as though it's helping him get rid of it rather than digging it in deeper. Goes to bed early with the aid of Iron Man 2 and chamomile tea and a lot of Nyquil.

*

**(friday)**

He still feels like death in the morning, but his throat's a little better, and he's meant to go see Teresa again today, so he drags himself out of bed and into a scalding hot shower to clear his clogged head.

Bruce is whining at the front door by the time Louis finishes some soft scrambled eggs, for his throat, and two cups of tea, so he bundles up and hunches out into the damp late-morning chill for a quick walk.

The back of his neighborhood is shrouded in fog, weak white sunlight low in the sky. They head for the little park there, more like a clearing at the end of the dead-end street – a wet, dark green ribbon of possibly artificial woods through the city suburb. Louis pulls his beanie down further over his head, his hood higher up, too, sniffling as he watches his breath fog up. His hands are damp in his jacket pocket, where he's rolling a tennis ball between thumb and forefinger. Staring down as Bruce tugs ahead: one foot in front of the other.

He lets Bruce off-leash when they get to the end of the road and whiffs the ball for him so it spikes off a tree and goes bouncing off, Bruce barking as he chases it. Louis stands there rocking on his heels, shrugging deeper into his layers. His socks are pulled up over the ankles of his joggers, and he thinks absently that that's what'll give him away if anyone who doesn't know he lives nearby here passes – his socks. El's the only one of them who ever posted photos with Bruce. The thought makes him sad.

Then he remembers that Lottie had snapped a photo of him and the dog when they'd been at his mum's place. It had been Niall he was smiling up at then, Niall with his family. Niall in every frame.

“What am I doing,” he breathes to himself, and then Bruce comes back with the ball, panting and wagging and running in circles. Louis takes it from him, pinching it between his thumb and middle finger to keep from getting too much slime on him. He crouches down, grabs Bruce in a bear hug to stop him squirming and kisses the top of his head.

"I'm a big fuck-up, Brucie,” he says. “I know. I am. I take all these good things and I just fuck them up.” He bites his lip. It's easier to say it in dog-voice. “But you love me anyway,” he mumbles into Bruce's fur. “No matter what I do. Not going anywhere, are you, bud?"

Bruce whines, sticks his cold nose in Louis' ear, and Louis laughs on a sigh.

"Alright," he says, standing upright with difficulty, quads aching. "Go get it!" He chucks the ball overhand and it sails between the trees, and Bruce runs after it, out of sight. Then Louis is just standing in the quiet clearing by himself, waiting.

*

"What's on your mind today?" Teresa asks once they're settled in.

“Well, I'm sick,” Louis says.

“I can see that,” she says. “You alright to be out? You know you can cancel on me if you need to. Just give me 24 hours.”

“No, it's – it's not that bad. The cough's mostly gone, at least. But I might skip our thing this weekend.”

“Not Ronnie Wood.”

“No, no, I mean, I hope not.” He swallows, reaches for her tissues. “They're – I mean, we're supposed to go to Cannes tomorrow for that awards show. Dunno if I'm gonna make it.”

“How do you feel about that?”

He sighs. “Like I could go if I really wanted,” he mutters. “But I want to be in top form on Sunday, and...” he shakes his head. “I just don't wanna go.”

“It might be a little much to just dive back into your full schedule after the time off you've taken,” she reasons. “If you've got the option, then –”

“I don't, really. I can count on one hand the number of times we've been short a person at a gig in the past four years.”

“Has it really been four years?”

He laughs a little. “Yeah.”

“And you're 22 now?”

“Almost 23,” he says, mouth twisting. “In like, less than two weeks.”

She hums thoughtfully. “You've had to grow up a bit faster than other people your age, haven't you?”

He shrugs. “The other boys have, maybe. They're younger than me. I'm just... I don't know. I've actually always felt kind of stunted.” He thinks of what he needs to tell her, that he's realized he has some kind of feelings for Niall, for a _boy_ , sinking in more and more with every passing hour. It's so late to be figuring that kind of thing out. Louis hasn't had the space to do it, with everything, all the scrutiny, the speculation. Hasn't been able to know anything for himself.

She's waiting, can tell he's thinking it through. “D'you want to say more about that?”

He takes a deep breath. "Alright, listen, you signed an NDA, right?"

She sits up a little straighter, raising an eyebrow. "I did,” she says. “But everything you tell me is completely and totally confidential, anyway, unless I'm worried you're a danger to yourself or others, which I'm not at all worried about, at least not at the moment. So why do you ask?”

“Um,” he says. “I was just thinking that – one of the ways that I feel like I'm kind of behind, is...” He tries to figure out the best way to approach it.

“I think I might've... I think I might... be falling for Niall,” he says, and he winces as the words come out. They're true, he can feel how true they are in the core of him, but they're such a fucking mess in the making.

“Okay,” she says. “And you feel stunted this about how?”

He laughs. She's not easily distracted. “I just don't really know, or, I never knew – if I was, um. Into boys? Men? I don't know. I never figured it out.”

“Some people take longer than others with that,” she says. “There's no right time to have figured it out, Louis.”

“I know, but – it's just 'cause I was with Eleanor for so long, and the fans have always – I mean, there's always these stupid rumors. And I just.” He swallows. “I didn't wanna, I mean, I don't wanna be.”

“Gay?” she supplies gently. “Or bisexual, or?”

“Well, bi, I suppose. Or... yeah.”

“Why not?"

“Just... the idea that everyone else knew something about me that I didn't," he mumbles. "That… I went all this time not knowing, until now."

"There's nothing wrong with that," she says. "The things people assume – they're different than the truth, even if they look a bit similar."

He's been studying his knees, but he looks up at her then, frowning. "You really think that?"

She nods. "It's never really all the way true 'til you know it, is it? 'Til it's really part of you." She lets him work on that for a second, then inclines her head. "Sort of like the part where you know you deserve to be happy. There's no weight to me or anybody saying it, is there, unless you believe it."

The words wash over him, and he's not sure if he's there yet – but he thinks he might be soon, if they keep on like this, if he can keep seeing her until tour starts at least. That with some work, he'll work it out. For now he's still in limbo.

“But proving them all right,” he mumbles. “I don't want to give people the bloody satisfaction.”

“Louis, I mean, it's more important that you're squared away with yourself than what anyone else thinks of you,” she says, frowning. “You've gotta put yourself first.”

"But -- with Niall, I mean, I don't even think he's into boys."

"How do you know?"

"Well, he's only ever been with girls, that I know of, anyway."

"So have you," she points out. "That I know of."

He narrows his eyes at her. "So, what, I just ask him? You can't just ask."

"Sure you can. You trust him, don't you?"

"But that's what I'm worried about, that I'm just thinking like this because -- God, I don't know. Because he's nice to me. Like, because it's easy.” That's not it, really; Niall's always been nice to him, as nice and easy as this. Louis' just taking it differently now than he used to. More vulnerable space for it to get into, maybe. He doesn't really know anything about it except, undeniably, that it's there.

“You've been friends with him for a long time.” Teresa's voice is as gentle as it ever gets. “This sounds like it's a bit newer than that.”

Louis gnaws on his lip. "It's like I don't know what to do with my own head," he says, and then the words come in a flood. "Like, he spent that whole week with me, and he was so _good_ to me, he was – patient, and he made me laugh and he cooked for me, and – and he sat with me while I cried, and he helped me find you, and, God. I just, like, latched onto it. Like, I just felt like –" he's shaking a little now, doesn't know what to say. "I don't know what to do. I'm fucked up." The syllables percussive, spat out like a bad taste.

She sighs. "Alright," she says. "First things first. I've heard you use that type of encoding quite a lot. 'Because I'm fucked up' this, or 'I don't know what's wrong with me' that. Well. It's my job to tell you that there's nothing precisely wrong with you." And she holds up a finger as he goes to speak.

"Hang on," she says gently. "Now, you are under an amazing amount of stress, and it seems to me that you're a person who's quite self-critical, and a bit high-strung, as well – I just mean that in the sense of, you carry your nerves and all that kind of tight, like up here." She puts her hand above her heart, across her collarbone, where on him the script of _it is what it is_ is half-visible in his loose-necked tee.

"And you don't take things lightly," she goes on. "You make a show of that you do, but it just means you aren't dealing with it _in_ here." She touches her heart again, and her temple. "You get a bit of cognitive distortion there. Calling things the end of the world that aren't. We call that catastrophizing. But you're not sick, love. Not so bad that you can't feel better if you try." She tilts her head. "Okay?"

His heart's stopped in his throat as he looks at her, her voice in his ears the only other thing that exists. He feels younger than he has in a long time as he listens.

"I just get the sense," she goes on, "that it's hard for you to really try and deal with your feelings head-on, because that would mean admitting that they mattered. That they're real, do you know what I mean? And that that's fine. What do you make of that?"

He swallows. "Fuck, Teresa." It makes her smile, but his throat is too dry to say anything else.

"You can love yourself, Louis," she says gently. "There's a difference between that and being selfish, do you see?"

"Okay," he says. "So. What, then – I mean, with Niall." His voice cracks, and he blows his nose to cover it, like it's just because he's ill.

Teresa smiles. "What about him?"

"What do I do?"

"Well, you have feelings for him. Are you interested in a relationship with him?"

Louis bites the inside of his cheek. "I dunno. It just got really soft, do you know what I mean? Really intense, really fast. I felt like… I mean, we did get closer, while he was staying with me. We've been getting closer. And – he loves me," he says, with effort. “But I just keep thinking that – what if I'm acting like this just because it makes sense? Like, because I've been lonely, and it's easy, like I said?”

"Can you try to put that part aside for me?" she asks. "The part that thinks you've – I think your phrase was _fallen for him_ , because it's the easy thing. Why does it feel like you've done it, without that?"

He takes a long time to do it, sinking into his own head.

"Then... it's because of him?" he tries. "Because – he makes me better. And I just wanna be around that all the time. And – around him." It's like a sudden glow, knowing it. He looks up at her.

“I just love him,” he says. “I guess that's it.”

She smiles. “It's sweet, Louis. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“I guess not,” he murmurs.

“D'you think you might talk to him about it?”

“God.” He blows his nose again. “I can't, I mean, we can't actually – there's no way—”

“Why not?”

“'Cause of the band, I mean, and – I don't even know if he's... ” He pictures Niall as he says it – his big laugh every time he's around Louis, how he's always blushing, how sometimes Louis catches him just staring. But he's like that with everyone, isn't he? It's just Niall. But at the same time it isn't. Niall isn't at everyone's houses for a week doing their dishes and spooning them in their beds when they're in a funk, at least not to Louis' knowledge. It's not nothing.

“So talk to him about it," she says. "You've just told me all about how good he is to you. If that's true, do you really think it would all just stop if he knew you had feelings for him? Or even that you were interested in men, in general?"

"Maybe," Louis says, though he's doubting it even as the word comes out.

"Then it sounds as though you don't think he's such a good person after all." 

"He's the best person." Louis surprises himself with how fierce it sounds, but it's true. Teresa spreads her hands, and he laughs, shaking his head. 

"Look," she says. "The practical aspects of it are just going to turn into excuses to do nothing, because you feel safe doing nothing, and because you can beat yourself up for doing nothing.” She gives him a minute to process that, leveling a slightly stern expression at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

“I think you owe it to both of you to take the risk,” she says. “I'm not trying to encourage you to go and get your heart broken. But it's clear that he cares about you. Whatever happens – if it's as friends, or whatever else – I think the two of you will be alright.”

He thinks of self-respect, of going further than existing, than daily comforts. Of investing something in yourself.

"Am I paying you enough?" he asks her, and she laughs louder than he's heard her do yet.

*

**(saturday)**

The day he doesn't go to France is a bad day. Louis is actually feeling marginally better when he wakes up, but not enough to nut up and change his plans. And he feels bad about that, and feels bad about feeling bad about it, and it's a spiral like he's not had in what feels like a long time now, even though it's only been a couple of weeks since Niall turned up in his living room and coaxed him into all this uncharted territory.

Bruce seems to get it, though, there's that at least. It's like how dogs know when there's about to be an earthquake, or when their owner's going to have a seizure. He crawls into Louis' lap, a too-big pile of floppy dog limbs and curly fur, whines while Louis sends a tweet about how he's too sick to perform. _:( sorry :(_. Louis hasn't been on Twitter in fucking forever, and he sits there staring at it like he's having a relapse with some terrible hard drug, watching the replies roll in.

And the stupidest part is they're almost all stupidly nice. There's a #GetWellSoonLouis trend going within an hour, and Niall tweets at him and so does Zayn, and Louis just so fucking _sad_ , barely knows why, just knows that he is.

He thinks of calling Teresa, but it feels more pathetic than anything, being the guy that calls his therapist all the time. And anyway her card's downstairs on the fridge and he hasn't put her number in his phone.

He's still online when the red carpet photos start to roll in. They've got a cool sort of navy blue motif going on and they all look normal, though it is a bit strange to see them as four and not five, even just for the way they stand. Lopsided, somehow. Louis knows he could have been there if he'd really wanted.

He shuts his eyes and tries to unpack it. He's sad for missing the gig, for bailing. For being sick and out of control. For being sad about those things, for letting himself be sad, when he doesn't want to go on feeling like this.

That's the root of it. He stops on it like he's hit the end of a long tunnel and opened a door there, and all that's behind it is a mirror, saying a brand-new thing: _You want to be happy._

It feels new, anyway, this fighting against the sadness like a rising and falling tide. Lifting up in it, feeling the sun, reaching not to be pulled back under. Trying, at least that.

He crumples a little bit, then, sinks down into his pillows with his face scrunched up and stares at the picture on his phone a while longer. Niall's got one of his collarless white shirts buttoned all the way to his throat. He looks good, but kind of low, not as effusive like he sometimes is at red carpets. Louis wonders if he's missing him. God. He hopes he is.

On cue, his phone buzzes with a text – a backstage selfie of the four of them looking sad. _wish u were here!!!!_ Niall's written underneath. Louis smiles, heart hurting. _Wish I was too lads !_ he replies. _See you tomorrow x._ Throws it in before he can rethink it. Niall sends him a bunch of the winking kissy face in return, says _aww look at u on yr phone_ , and it makes Louis laugh and feel totally out of his depth, like everything he used to know about his friendship with Niall has gone out the window.

They must go on stage after that, because he doesn't hear from them anymore. Louis sits there thinking about it, for too long, until finally Bruce noses up under his chin and cuddles him and makes his breathing settle.

Louis takes a bunch of Nyquil and sleeps like a corpse. He has a crazy dream about being in a little boat on the open sea with Niall and Elise, where Teresa keeps passing them on loop in a boat of her own, telling him to keep rowing even though Louis can plainly see they're almost at the horizon. Won't remember it when he wakes.

*

**(sunday)**

He surfaces from his drugged coma with X-Factor in his head, and his thoughts rise in pitch and number as he lies there staring at the half-lit ceiling, scattering him in too many directions.

One thing floats to the top: Niall on the first night, saying it helps to set just one goal for a day.

So Louis gets up and goes downstairs and writes the date on the bottom half of the barely used first page of the notebook Elise got him. _Sunday:_ he writes, _1\. play X-Factor finale with Ronnie Wood._

He draws a little empty checkbox next to it and leaves the journal open on the couch while he goes back up to his ensuite and takes several deep breaths, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror.

"You can do this," he says aloud. "You are good at this, and you can do it. You're gonna be fucking amazing. You're going to smash it." He grips the edge of the sink, and then pinches the soft inside of his bicep hard between his short nails, until his eyes water. Plays the words back in Niall's voice in his head. Then he gets in the shower.

He's anxious up to the moment he walks in the door of the hotel room where they're gathering before they head to the studios – he's in a clean tee and joggers for the first time in ages even though he's about to change right back out of them, a gigantic Thermos of tea in his hand. Alberto is a huge and steadying presence behind him, looking for the keycard. Louis knows the tickle in his throat is only nerves, but he still swallows around it again and again.

The room bursts into cheers and hollers as soon as Louis walks in, all four of them in states of half-readiness, shirts unbuttoned, presumably on purpose in Harry's case. Lou is chasing Zayn with a canister of hairspray, Liam's arguing with Caroline about what pocket to put his stupid bandana in, and about eight different people have stopped what they're doing to yell hello and are you feeling better and did you see this and that at Louis.

And there's a moment where he feels like he's wheeling on the edge of something, not knowing whether to be scared of what they're thinking or just happy to be with them.

Then Niall's there, his arms around Louis' shoulders, and it all goes at once.

"Yeah, yeah," he says to the room at large, smiling down into Niall's shoulder, waving a hand around his back. "Good to see you all too."

"Hope you're not still contagious." Niall pulls back, grinning and looking him over. "You look good. Had an alright week, otherwise?"

"Yeah," Louis says, fiddling with his fringe compulsively. Niall's pink in the cheeks, make-up already on him, wearing all black with red piping on his shirt and now-trademark rips across the knees of his skinnies. He's full of energy, the only one who's ready. Christ, Louis is glad to see him. It feels good more than it hurts.

"Good you could come, love," Lou says, coming up fluff at Louis' hair with one hand. She steers him toward a chair. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be," Louis says, shaking his Thermos as an explanation. He sweeps his eyes across the room and gets a different encouraging smile from each of them, Harry and Liam and Zayn. Niall's behind him, and he hip-checks Louis gently as he passes, smirking at him. Louis is so full of warmth it feels like he doesn't have room for it all, for all this. For how lucky he is. He'd forgotten what it felt like. That no matter what happens, he'll still have them.

*

Their one rehearsal goes too quick, leaves Louis wild with nerves, but as it turns out he needn't have worried: the performance goes off without a hitch. Beyond that -- it's insane, next-level amazing, like nothing they've done in recent memory. Harry's jacked up all to fuck, careening around the stage like a lunatic, and Niall keeps laughing and he's playing his guitar next to _Ronnie fucking Wood_ and they sound so good, the best they maybe ever have on a song premiere like this. From the moment they start it's like Louis never left, it's so much fun.

His heart is racing the adrenaline through his veins when they hit the last note, ears ringing, more alive than he's felt since the tour, since longer. His muscles sing.

He's barely caught his breath when they crowd in for a hug after, and Niall looks up at him from across the circle, and he loses it again just as fast. He feels like he's bursting with this, made of light that's lancing out of him at the seams, and he roars with Niall as they go off-stage, Niall throwing an arm around his shoulders, bouncing against his side.

"That was so good," Niall announces emphatically when they're back in the green room, on that joyous wavering pitch he gets when he's excited and can't control his voice. Liam's chattering excitedly, too, so fast Louis can't really understand him. Harry just throws his head back and howls like a wolf.

"How'd that feel?" Zayn asks Louis from his immediately chill perch up on a countertop. He's swinging his legs, though, jittery as he ever gets. "Good, man?"

"The best." Louis grins up at him, knocks his fist against the one Zayn's holding out. "So good."

Zayn grins back, blissful. There's something so grounding about making eye contact with him. Louis has missed it, has missed all of it. He barely missed _out_ on anything for real but it's been longer than that since he's been fully here, with both feet almost all the way on the ground.

"It's good to have you back," Zayn says, like a goddamn mind-reader. "In the land of the living."

"Yeah." Louis catches Niall's eye across the room. He can't stop looking for him every time he's out of view, as though Niall's a beacon in the center of all their orbiting. Light and warmth wherever he turns.

"Nialler," Louis says, hearing his voice like it's someone else's. He jerks his head toward the door. Niall raises an eyebrow, but he follows automatically.

The green room's buzzing with activity, and no one seems to care when they slip out into the dimly lit hallway under the stage. There's a vestibule that's kitty-corner from their door, and without really knowing what he's doing, Louis tucks himself him in there so that Niall does too.

"What a fucking show, eh?" Niall says, soft and fierce. He's got this gleam in his eye, looking at Louis, and there's a rushing in Louis' ears as he stares back. It steals his breath how suddenly it's come: the need to touch, to be closer. Up close like this, he feels it more than ever – like he imprinted on Niall in the week they spent alone together, like Niall got into him while the wound was still open and it healed over him. Like he's made a home under Louis' skin.

Louis steps into his space. He slides his hands over Niall's warm sides through his soft black shirt, and Niall stills to the bone. And just as his face starts to fall, Louis leans in and kisses him.

There's something perfect about his lips under Louis', the feeling of it resonating on an overtone neither of them can hear, and it gets even better when Niall unfreezes and leans in, just enough and then more, opening for him, his hands coming up to clutch in Louis' t-shirt, at his hips beneath his blazer. Louis feels rather than hears the noise Niall makes in the back of his throat as Louis licks over the seam of his lips, slips his tongue in. He presses Niall to the wall, presses the whole line of their bodies together, kisses him harder with a hand at his jaw to keep the angle right. And Niall hasn't pulled away. He's kissing back, every bit as easy for it as Louis had imagined. 

Finally Niall breaks away to get his breath, panting, still holding onto Louis' shirt. “Louis,” he gasps, and his voice is ragged but he's grinning like he can't keep it off his face. “What the hell?”

“Is that a good what the hell, or,” Louis asks, finding himself grinning too. His ears are ringing and he can barely feel his feet beneath him on the floor. He kissed Niall. And it was sudden but it wasn't, it was weeks of this, months, longer. Niall always there for him, never judging. Niall saved him. 

“Good,” Niall breathes, and he reaches up to touch Louis' face, cups his cheek and then slides his hand into his hair. “Unexpected, but – good."

Louis just goes with it a moment, shuts his eyes and leans into Niall's palm. “I was meant to talk to you about it,” he says, looking at Niall with a nervous smile. “Guess I just – skipped ahead.”

Niall kisses him again, and Louis sinks into it, sighing through his nose. Neither one of of them has said a thing of substance yet and Louis still knows in every part of this that Niall feels it like he does.

He holds onto him after, presses his face into Niall's neck. Kisses him there a little and realizes he's trembling, that they both are. Feels Niall's chest rise and fall against him.

“I'm not – kidding myself about this, then,” Louis murmurs. “I'm not just. I mean. This is something?”

“Yeah,” Niall breathes. “Of course it is, Louis, I don't know if I could have made it more obvious.”

“You could've done this,” Louis reasons. Niall doesn't say anything for a second, going still in Louis' arms. 

"I could've," he murmurs. Louis pulls back to look at him, and Niall's schooling the strangest look from his face -- a happy-sad, all this wild hope, and all of a sudden Louis thinks to wonder how long it's been. How long this was out there, waiting for him to pick up on it. 

"So it's okay?" Louis asks him again, voice going small. Still can't trust a good thing at first sight.

"It is so okay," Niall says, "Lou --" and he laughs, shaking his head like he can't believe it. "this is, like, the best fucking thing. The only -- the only way tonight could've gotten better." He kisses him again, quick, covering the moment. 

“Okay,” Louis says, laughing, and then he can't stop, going giddy with it. “If you insist.”

“Fix your hair,” Niall says, and then does it for him. “We should get back.” It's adorable the way he says it, like it's the last thing he wants.

Louis squeezes his hand before they go, and it's for Niall, for show, but mostly it's for himself.

*

There's an after-party, and too many people, and they don't get another moment alone together until Louis is already falling asleep where he stands.

“I've gotta go,” he mumbles to Niall. He's had a bit to drink, and Niall's had quite a bit more, and he's looking at Louis like he really wants to drag him off for a snog in the bathroom. “I'm dead on my feet, mate, I'm sorry.”

“S'alright,” Niall says. He hugs Louis for a long time anyway. Louis has shut his eyes, wondering if he could get away with just going to sleep on Niall's shoulder right here.

"Hey, though," Niall asks, pulling back enough to look Louis in the eye. "Are you good? You okay?"

Louis knows by now what he's asking -- not just _okay_ in the moment but, like, bigger. The more important kind.

"You know, I will be," he says. "Getting there." 

Niall's mouth ducks a little. "Good," he murmurs. "That's the best way to be."

"I'm finding that out," Louis says, almost to himself. He's so tired, but there's something else he wants to say. "Niall, I'm sorry I was horrible to you. When you first came 'round. No, really." Niall's trying to wave him off. And the first thing Louis thinks to say next is _I was being a real dick_ , but that's not quite it. "I wasn't, like, myself. Or the version I wanna be, at least. I'm... really glad you stayed anyway." 

"Well," Niall says in his littlest voice, so it almost gets lost under the noise of the room. "It's kinda how I am when it comes to you, innit." 

Louis pulls him in again, feels Niall sigh in his arms like he's been holding onto the last bit of his breath for ages. "Come over tomorrow," he murmurs into Niall's neck. “We can make food or something. Do one of those things I need to learn to do myself.”

Niall laughs. “I'll be there. Now go get well.”

“Alright. Love you,” Louis says without thinking, and a thrill runs through him. He steps back to look at Niall, suddenly out in mid-air with nothing to keep himself safe from this.

Something complicated happens on Niall's face, and his smile is a little shaky, the way Louis feels right now -- overwhelmed by it. “I love you too, Lou,” he says, and he pecks him on the cheek while Louis is too busy reeling from that to avoid the ridiculousness of it.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” he tells him, and he floats softly all the way out of the party and into the car, into his house and his bed, floating like he'll never come down.

*

**(monday)**

Niall shows up at seven sharp with a bottle of good Shiraz and something wrapped in Christmas paper tucked against his chest like a schoolboy with a stack of textbooks. He grins when Louis opens the door, steps in past him still grinning, brushing close. Louis tries to smirk but doesn't really manage it. It's too genuine, is the thing, the warm pleasure of seeing Niall after yesterday. Of having him back here and answering the door for him in a clean black t-shirt and joggers, his hair washed, standing on his own for once. 

"What've you brought me?" he asks, taking the bottle and the present from Niall and giving them both a shake. The package seems like a book. "Pretty sure this one's wine, but... " and he lapses into more grinning when Niall laughs his head off. "My birthday's not for another… Christ. Week. Eight days. No, nine." 

"Celebrating early," Niall says. He rocks on his heels for a moment, looking at Louis' mouth, and then he goes, "Can I," all quiet, and before Louis can even answer he's leaning in and kissing him. It knocks the wind out of Louis it comes so quick, before Niall's even taken off his coat, so that all he can do is put his laden hands out to the side and let Niall pull him in by the small of his back and kiss him like he's trying to make sure, spinning with it. 

"Okay," Louis breathes when they break apart. Niall's pink in the cheeks, standing in front of him as though he's waiting for a final decision, but Louis can't give him one out loud. He's still just buzzing over this, over Niall initiating it, the thrill of letting it go on its own. Of just feeling instead of thinking. 

"Okay," Niall repeats finally, grinning. "Where's Bruce?" 

"Outside. He wouldn't leave the steaks alone."

Niall raises an eyebrow, and Louis grins, gesturing with a flourish to the kitchen. 

Niall whistles appreciatively as he follows him in. Louis has asparagus in a pan on the stove, steaks marinating in a dish on the counter and an aspirational recipe for an herb butter open on his iPad beside it. 

"Look at you," Niall says. "All grown up." 

"Weren't we just talking about how I'm 23 in nine bloody days," Louis grouses, but it makes him feel good to have impressed Niall. To have gotten himself to do anything like this at all. "I don't think I really know what I'm doing with the steaks, if I'm honest." 

"That might help," Niall says, nodding to the present Louis has set down on the table. Louis raises an eyebrow.

"Aren't you smooth," he says, and Niall flushes. 

"Go 'head, then," he says. "It's nothing special."

"Hush that," Louis says. "Thank you." 

"You haven't opened it yet," Niall points out, but Louis leans over and kisses him quick anyway, heart leaping with it. He can't help but laugh a little after, that they're just going to keep toeing at it like this until it gives. 

"Don't," Niall says, and he's laughing too but his eyes are intent on Louis' face, like they always are. "You're a fucking tease." 

Louis smiles, smug, undoes the green Christmas bow on the present -- it matches the jumper Niall's wearing, evergreen with a little white tree logo stitched on the chest -- and slips his fingers under the paper folds at the corners, then along the tape, pops it up slow. 

"Take your time," Niall says.

"Quiet, I'm savoring it," Louis says, and then he sees what book it is as he starts to unfold the paper and he bursts out laughing. "Oh, Niall." It's Niall's favorite _15-Minute Meals_ , full of Post-It flags like a colorful feathery edge. "My very own Jamie Oliver."

"Figured you could use a bit of help getting started feeding yourself." Niall's grinning, watching Louis open the cover.

"I can feed myself," Louis mutters, running a hand over the first page. Niall's scrawled on it, _lou -- i'd say make me proud but you always do, so i'll just say, make me food! love, niall._

"Have you marked up the easy ones?" Louis asks, instead of saying anything right away about the way that's making him feel, like his heart's too big for his chest, like he needs to say something perfect to Niall, too. 

"Some easy," Niall says. "Some… intermediate, like. It's a starter kit. There's instructions for steak in there somewhere."

"Shepherd's pie, of course," Louis nods, flipping through. "The parma ham chicken." He can't help laughing. "This is great, Niall. Honestly."

"I know you can take care of yourself and all now," Niall says, "but I still kinda like helping." 

"I kinda like you helping," Louis murmurs, still bowled over by this, by how good it feels. They're just sitting there staring at each other for too long, half-smiling, just a little too much distance between them, until the stove makes a noise and Louis jumps. "Oh, shit, the asparagus."

Niall cackles openly as Louis leaps up. "It's fine, Lou. You've got it on low, it's perfect." 

"It's done," Louis mumbles, turning off the burner and tipping the veg onto a plate. "Steaks are almost ready to cook, d'you wanna open that wine?" 

"Yessir," Niall says. He finds the corkscrew on his own -- he practically organized this kitchen, probably knows where all the shit is that Louis can never find. Still, the whole thing feels like the first night of the rest of Louis' life -- cooking in his clean house with Niall here again, Bruce in the back garden, things settled out just enough. After a separation, after everything. A restart. 

Niall grimaces as he pulls the cork free with a satisfying, breathy pop. "You got music?" he asks. 

Louis hums, prodding at the iPad and scrolling through his options. "Have you heard of James Bay?" Niall shakes his head. "Think you'll like him," Louis says. He sets the playlist to Bluetooth. 

Niall stands there, cork and corkscrew in hand, listening to Hold Back The River with his eyes trained on a middle distance between them, nodding his head in time. 

"Good, right?" 

"Love it," Niall says, looking up. "What a voice." 

"I know. Knew you would." 

Niall grins, then does that into-it grimace that's special to the best music, snapping his fingers as the beat comes in. "Fuck yeah," he says. "This is great. Gimme those glasses." 

He points to a cabinet that Louis would have given a 50 percent chance at best of containing glassware, but there the wine glasses are, right where Niall left them. "I swear you know my kitchen better than I do at this point," Louis says. He's not even mad about it. 

Niall pours them wine. "Cheers, Tommo," he says with a smile. "To your new lease on life, or something like that."

Louis bites his lip as they clink glasses. "Something like that," he agrees. 

The song changes after that, to a slower one, and Niall sets his glass down on the counter. 

"C'mere," he says. 

"What?"

"Just c'mere," he repeats, and Louis thinks they're going to kiss when Niall pulls him in, but Niall's cheek goes to Louis' shoulder, hands on his back. Louis lets out a shaky sigh, holds him, too, as Niall shuffles their feet into a rhythm. And then they're dancing.

"Are you serious," Louis breathes, but he can't help going with it. He thinks he feels Niall smile into his shoulder. Bay sings, _Didn't get tonight, we don't have tomorrow, so don't ruin now_. "But this is, like, a sad song, Nialler. It's like a sad boner jam." 

"Is it?" Louis feels him grin against his shoulder. "Oh, well, that's alright."

"No it isn't," Louis says, embarrassed by how plaintive it comes out. 

Niall shifts back to look at him, head tipped in question. 

"I just." Louis laughs, looks down at his feet. "I want this all to be perfect. I don't know." 

"It is perfect," Niall says, easy as that. "It doesn't matter if the song's sad. Whole thing's good anyway."

Louis smiles down at the floor. 

"You know the song's gonna end eventually," Niall says, dipping his head to catch Louis' eye. "And we'll still be here doing this when it does." 

It's like Louis' whole soul twinges with it, and kissing Niall then is literally the only thing he can imagine doing. He backs him into the counter, licks the taste of wine from his mouth, holds Niall fast to him with a hand in his hair and another at his hip, pressing bodily into him. 

"Louis," Niall gasps, voice as low as it ever gets, and Louis shivers. Niall widens his stance so Louis' thigh slots between his, kisses him harder. They keep making out for too long, until the ballad ends and kicks into the hopeful opening build of Scars and Louis is going crazy with it, body aflame, half-hard in his pants. He can feel Niall is too.

"God," he gets out, "d'you -- do you want --"

"Yeah," Niall says, hot against Louis' neck, and his hands drop between them, undoing his own flies and shoving Louis' joggers and shorts down. He licks his lips, swallows hard. "Can I -- I…."

"What?" Louis is desperate for it, anything, going crazy with the feel of open kitchen air on his bare arse and Niall's still-clothed thigh pressing up into his dick. He could probably just rub off like this, if Niall would take his bloody pants off. 

Niall spins them, pressing Louis into the counter with surprising ease. It's a turn-on, that he's stronger than Louis when he wants to be. But in this moment everything's a turn-on. Louis whines, pressing his hips forward and moaning when his dick meets Niall's hand.

"Fuck," he gasps. "Jesus, we're in my kitchen." 

"I know." Niall laughs, husky, then spits in his hand and starts jerking Louis off. 

"This isn't fair," Louis says, feverish, "get your stupid jeans off, then -- wanna see you." His voice goes broken at the end, overwhelmed by the feel of Niall's warm hand working at him, by all of it. 

Niall lets him go for just a second to peel his jeans down past his stiff cock and over thighs and then he's back to it. Louis touches him, a little hesitant, and lets out a low laugh. 

"You get wet, Niall."

"Yeah," Niall breathes in his ear. "Catch me up."

"God." Niall's already leaking precome enough that it's easy for Louis to start to jerk him off, hand sliding tight over Niall's dick. Louis keeps getting lost in the smell and the sound and the feel of him and then snapping out of it, smelling food or zeroing in on the music, before Niall twists his wrist and Louis spins back out of focus, pressed hard against the counter, breathing harsh against Niall's neck. 

"Christ," Niall moans, "Lou -- kiss me," and Louis fumbles to do it, surging against him with one hand still on his dick, trying to keep up a rhythm with the weird, close angle. Niall seems better at this than Louis is, and Louis wonders a bit frantically if he's been with men before. He must have been. Somehow the thought makes Louis want to kiss him harder, bite at his lower lip until he's gasping. He grips Niall's arse with his other hand, pushes his hips up into him. 

"Fuck, Tommo," Niall mumbles. His face is different than Louis has ever seen it when he looks up -- his eyes blown and wet, flushed everywhere, his mouth open and red and wanting. "You could fuck me right here," he says, and his lips trembling around the words are his only tell. 

"Here?" Louis' mouth floods, and he feels dizzy. Niall is still squeezing his cock, too slow. "Jesus, Niall." He pictures it, bending Niall over the counter in his soft green jumper. Squeezes his pale arse again and licks his lips, and all that comes out when he opens his mouth is, "Please." 

"Please," Niall repeats, and he gives a wild little giggle. He lets Louis go and steps back. "D'you have lube and stuff?"

"God, I don't know. Lotion, maybe. Condoms upstairs in the bedside table."

"Don't move," Niall says, and he kisses Louis once and then he's hitching up his jeans and darting away before Louis knows what's happening. He stands there, joggers around his ankles, listening to James Bay still playing as if from a great distance. Stares at the steaks still sitting in the marinade. He should turn them over. He can't remember how to use his body except as it relates to Niall. 

Louis finishes his glass of wine before Niall comes back, jeans half done, carrying a condom and a bottle of hand lotion. The head of his dick is poking up from his shorts, and Louis kind of wants to put it in his mouth. God. Too many things at once. 

"I can get myself ready," Niall says, breathless and determined, like he doesn't want to give this space to get scary. Louis feels on the edge of it already, in so far over his head and pushing further down still. But then that's always been the case with Niall. Niall makes it familiar, even the new parts, even as Louis is finding out what he wants just as it happens. 

He watches for a second as Niall shoves his jeans down to his ankles again, then kicks his shoes off and steps out of his kit completely. Niall is fully half-naked in his kitchen and Louis is standing there without even his dick in his hand, staring open-mouthed.

"Let me," he says, ditching his pants too and stepping into Niall's space. Niall's slicked his fingers up with lotion and he has a hand behind him, and Louis follows his wrist until he feels what his hand is doing, pressed close enough to Niall that his dick is pressed against his hip. 

"I can't believe this is happening," Niall says with a shaky laugh. His eyes meet Louis', close, and it's almost hesitant when he leans in to kiss him this time, everything slowed down. Louis shuts his eyes, tangles his fingers with Niall's so he gets some of the lotion and runs a fingertip around Niall's rim. Niall already has two fingers inside himself, working them in gently. Louis touches his side, stroking outside his jumper to help him relax. 

"Can I," he says into Niall's mouth, "one more," and Niall nods, breathing out. Louis' finger sliding in alongside Niall's makes Niall buck and gasp, biting at Louis' jaw, clutching at him with his free hand. 

"Fuck," he grunts out, pushing his fingers and Louis' in deeper until Louis just brushes what must be his prostate and Niall shudders, whimpering high in his throat. "Fuck," he whispers again. Louis can't stop looking at his face. He works their fingers in again, feels Niall scissor his apart. 

"Does it feel good?"

Niall nods, breathless. "It's so good," he says, "God, Louis." He slips his fingers out. "Fuck it, 'm ready," and then he turns around. 

"Holy shit," Louis hears himself say, like he's suddenly outside this situation, watching it from above. Niall with his elbows on the counter, back bent, arse up for Louis, hanging his head to catch his breath for a moment. 

"Hey, Lou," he says, looking back and grinning sidelong. "You with me?"

"Yeah, yeah," Louis says, shaking himself. He strokes his dick a few times, rolls on the condom and slicks it up with lotion. He rubs the rest around Niall's hole, pressing against him for a moment with his cock just sliding between Niall's cheeks. Niall sighs, harsh, bracing himself with a hand against the backsplash. 

"Okay," Louis says. "Just -- tell me -- like this?"

It's familiar, mostly, except for the way Niall moves under his hands, arching the flat planes of his thin boy body as Louis holds the dip of his waist and pushes into him, so slow.

"Oh, yeah," Niall breathes. "Shit, Lou."

"Oh my god," Louis says, wild with it, "oh my god, Niall, you're so tight." 

Niall makes a noise in response, pushing back onto Louis' dick, and Louis has to fuck in and out of him a bit before he can get all the way in, draped over Niall's back. He's inside him. "Niall," he says in a trembling little voice, "I can't -- fucking believe this."

"I know," Niall bites out. He arches down in the stretch of his jumper so Louis feels it, moans a little. "Fuck, you've gotta move, Louis."

Louis sets his hands back at his hips and finds a rhythm, and it gets easier from there. Niall's dropped his head onto one arm on the counter, hand in a fist, moving with him. He's quieter than Louis had thought he would be, breathing, mostly, little gasps in time with Louis' thrusts, moaning when he gets in the deepest. Louis feels like his whole body's on fire, every nerve focused in on Niall and the place where they're joined, his brain all Niall like it's been for weeks. 

"God, c'mere," Louis gasps, and he wraps an arm around Niall's chest and hauls him up. Niall's pliant in his arms, pushing down against Louis' hips. Louis reaches around and fists his cock, wanks him off while he fucks him half-standing, rocking his hips against Niall's arse. Niall's feet are planted on either side of his and his head falls back against Louis' shoulder, mouth wide and gasping. 

"Louis, kiss me, fuck, I'm almost --"

Louis kisses him open-mouthed and messy, feels Niall start to tighten up around him, shaking against his chest. He's sweating through his shirt, and he slides a hand under Niall's to rake at his chest hair, his damp skin, kisses the juncture of his shoulder. He cups a hand around the head of Niall's dick and rocks in hard, hitting his prostate and staying there, pressed forward so Niall has to brace on his hands against the counter.

"C'mon, Nialler," Louis breathes, "wanna feel you," and Niall's nodding frantically and then his eyes fall shut and he pushes into Louis' hand as he starts to come, one hand flying to himself to work his orgasm out into Louis' palm. He clenches around Louis' dick as he does it and Louis groans, burying his face in the hair at the back of Niall's neck, breathing in the heady cologne-and-sweat smell of him. "Fuck -- Niall --" he gasps, and his orgasm takes him like a wave, inundating him out of nowhere, so that he cries out and presses flush to Niall's hips, jerking against him for what feels like ages. 

Niall drops so that his chest is on the counter after that, Louis draped over his back, still inside him, both of them panting. Niall finds his hand, the one that's not full of spunk, laces their fingers for a long moment. It makes Louis' heart hurt in the best way, realizing everything that just happened was real. That it was like that. 

He pulls out finally, thighs aching, and then he starts to laugh. "This is convenient," he says, and washes his hand off in the sink, chucks the condom in the trash. Niall laughs, turning around and stretching. 

"Oh my god," he groans, "I feel amazing, but also everything hurts, y'know?"

"I know," Louis laughs. He hands him a wet paper towel to wipe himself down with. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Niall says. He puts his boxers back on once he's cleaned off, sinks to the floor against the cabinets. Louis does the same and sits beside him, whole body still thrumming. He looks at Niall -- the mottled red along his throat where Louis had kissed him, his hair a wreck, sweat at his temples -- and giggles.

"Fuck," Niall sighs. "That was good. Right? Was that -- um. Your first time doing that?" 

Louis feels his face flame up, but he can't stop giggling. He can't remember the last time he was this full-on happy, so much that everything else becomes inconsequential. "Yeah," he says softly. "It was so good, Niall." 

Niall is staring at Louis' mouth. "D'you even know what you do to me," he murmurs. 

"I guess I know a bit."

"You, like... you were really scared of this, weren't you?" Niall asks quietly. It makes Louis shiver. "When you kissed me yesterday. It's like you were expecting me to push you away or something."

Louis leans against him, nose brushing his stubbly jawline, the kitchen equivalent of a cuddle after sex. "I just... it took me a bit to work it out," he says. "I didn't know at first if it was for the right reasons. I thought, like… yeah. That maybe it was just me confusing myself, or -- or that it just seemed, like, easy, you know?"

"But that wasn't it?"

Louis smiles, braver than he feels. "It's just -- you," he says. "You're -- I mean, you're the best thing, Niall, what you did for me -- what you always do. You're just... " he laughs. "I dunno. I just wanted this. Want, I mean, I just want… you, I guess. Sometimes it's simple like that, innit."

Niall looks down, smiling his weird emotional smile, one Louis knows well by now. "It's so good to hear you say that," he says. "The simple part. You're so, like..." He shakes his head. "Me too," he says finally. "Always just been you, for me." 

"God," Louis laughs, and Niall grins. "Listen to us."

They look at each other, and Louis remembers so many other moments like this -- Niall with him in the laundry room, beside the bathtub, at all his lowest points. Remembers all the times he felt like he didn't deserve him. Then he leans in and kisses Niall, just because he wants to. Because it feels good and because he likes himself as he does it, likes Niall so much, and he's over the bullshit of denying himself good things just to feel bad about it. He wants this and Niall does too, and now they get to have it, and it's all alright. 

"You know what else?" Niall mumbles against his lips. 

"What?" 

"Those steaks are gonna be marinated as hell by now," Niall says. "I'm fucking hungry."

Louis bursts out laughing. "Me too," he says, but neither one of them moves to get up. 

"You'll stay over, yeah?"

"Yeah," Niall says. "Lou -- I'm." He shakes his head. "Really happy right now." 

"Me too," Louis says again, and it's like it's a marvel for both of them. Being happy, and together. Happy on the kitchen floor with good music and steak to eat afterward and an incredible life. It's taken Niall for Louis to try to appreciate it again. In the moment, he does.

*

**(epilogue: saturday)**

Niall's chest hair is kicking right off on Saturday Night Live. Louis takes careful note of this, but then again they all look completely fucking ridiculous in their dance team tracksuits. There was a time when Louis would have phoned this in, wallowed in the thought of getting laughed at and not bothered giving a shit. But even Zayn's turning up a bit for the cameras, and so Louis does too, dancing with him, laughing at everyone's terrible accents and most of all his own. Lets himself have fun on Saturday Night bloody Live, for God's sake. 

He harasses Niall backstage between their skit and changing for the performance, skritching at his chest until Niall's squirming and crying mercy and retreating to Harry's blithely protective arms. They grin at each other across the room, and no one's noticed anything except that Louis seems happy again, and it's all okay. 

"Mate, check this out," Niall says once he's in his dressing room chair, scrolling through his phone with a grin spreading over his face while Lou fucks with his sideburns. "No Control's on a bunch of year-end lists." 

"What? No it isn't. Let me see." Louis grabs the phone, and his eyes go wide. "No fucking way." Rolling Stone, right there. "Twenty-five out of twenty-five," he says, laughing from his belly up, warm all over. "Aw, he doesn't like the loaded gun line."

"Yeah, but he's got nothing but praise is for how it's like, an ode to morning wood." 

"Which is a fair assessment." He gives Niall the phone back, and they look at each other until Louis gets overwhelmed by it and has to turn away. He really loves him. It's kind of crazy. 

"I can't get over it, can you?" he says to cover the fact that he's having a moment. "How much, like, real people like the album. Like, fans or not." 

Niall laughs. "You did good, Tommo."

" _You_ did good." 

"Right, you both did good," Lou says firmly. "Now go on, Niall, tag out." 

Niall gives Louis a high five and squeezes his hand for just a second as they swap chairs.

Louis is still thinking about it when they go on to sing. He's got his hair down across his forehead like he's 18 again, and Niall is next to him with his guitar and every time Louis hears himself hit a bad note, he remembers Niall in his periphery and takes a deep breath and keeps going. He's learning to like his own sound again, to let it all roll off his back and remember it's part of the whole in a way that's important. 

And by the end he's belting it out, thinking of X-Factor last weekend, letting it be amazing. It's just so easy to be over the moon about this when he stops thinking about the parts he hates or doubts or can't do well enough. When he just lets them all be good. Lets himself be good. 

Niall's the first person he finds during the credits, in a sea of strangers he should be glad-handing. He laughs as Niall goes straight for the hug, but it feels so good anyway. 

"Cheers, Nialler," he says in his ear, holding him tight and thumping him on the back.

"You know your accent was so terrible, earlier," Niall says as they pull back. Everyone else is talking about the show and what they're doing afterward and here Louis is wondering when and where he'll be able to get Niall alone. 

"I know, I know," he says, laughing, holding onto Niall's waist. "Nobody compares to you, and all that." 

"Oh, go on," Niall says, grinning. He trails his hand from the back of Louis' neck to squeeze his shoulder. "Proud of you, Lou," he says, low enough so only Louis can hear, and he touches his cheek for just a second before they break apart. It lifts something up in Louis' chest, something that's already been getting weighed down in his birthday next week, when it'll be almost time for another year of this. 

But he's got hope, on top of everything, the good and the bad and the in between. He looks at Niall next to him, and he knows they're going to be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> befriend me on tumblr @ [1dgaf](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/)!


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